—— 


ae 
ofan 
Ai = ee : Ep wate " > 
ae a ce aren cme a Re me eect rman sremn acer nds nemerns ® 
c- +5 a 
eee. 
Rae 








ae a a ee TT ER ee ao rem wermeeeren renaiy waren cmt: TR etn 
2 2% ee cere enn er ear etenminrenen | Een a 


fen 
Toe e Ere rere nee rere ree ern nmen e 


: we. 
ES et an ae ae Ne ot 
= "= ‘ = ern ronnie eaves A 











SRD CRE ECS e RSPR Hh OLY EEPROM LEER SORT RCA RRP Ba CE bateaePr ey 
iiiil bddhhl PEE CELE EEE CED EEL ft ait vines i Fn Teibtiat 
Ali HUTT TTT EP 
1 Hil | Ube ELT Hi HHT | : 
{ ; P ' ; ! ti 
i y | | H | | i i H | aa H H peaptaee } 
AT | | ALATA EET 
Hah PUTTER 
hi EE ey 
| Rally WAU AT eke HL | HEE EH Hh ie 
te ta ean ey Ha fill Ht 
t H iit if e i inl ' | + Hy iis Ht 
7 | HE HHT | j H th | H H 
a ea th PND VD fie bbe GDh Gb fs 7s i AEP ACL ie i 
, i ti SCN Sn TT oa tk TEEN NE Med tha | i HL 
Hitt HLT i ito if tt | 
| 
east 
niniiy 


a rec a Se 











7 al OF PRIA | 
anh "PD 
OCT 30 1928” | 

ay 















SOME TIMELESS MESSAGES 
OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 





waht ME Sia, 
Ah LES 








| Logioat gE 
Timeless Messages of 
the Christian Faith 


Sermons preached in the Church of Our Father 
in the year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Five 


By 


eee Breeden WW. Smith 


**Ve shall know the truth and the truth 
shall make you free.’’ 


“*T came that ye might have life and that 
ye might have life more abundantly.”’ 


NEWBURGH, N. Y. 


Published by 
REv. FREDERIC W. SMITH 
1926 


CORNWALL PRESS, CORNWALL, N. Y. 


hw _ We ‘ 2.6 “mre yee “i % yy. jinn th - 


To THE KiInp FRrIEenpDs 


whose suggestion and generosity made 
possible this publication and to the 
memory of 


Mrs. ANNIE DELANO HitTcH 


to whom the Church of Our Father 
owes a measureless debt of gratitude 


THis VoLUME Is AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/sometimelessmessOOsmit 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
DAs ANNI: DRGANO LITCH Vr i TUN ee 1 
A TWENTIETH CENTURY CHRISTIAN... 10 
PEGA UTHORITY OF sESUR et Ah a ihe ieiule | tenho 
CRU URCAND URBEDOM Whi Wide Vala es elite thg i AE ag 
CHRIST’S INTERPRETATION OF GOLDEN RULE . 54 
Curist’s MetHop oF JUDGING INDIVIDUALS . 68 
BREAKING THE WoRRY HaBitT ... . ; .:. 82 
SIGNIFICANCE OF SgeLF-LOVE . . ...... 96 
ConsipER Man! How He Grows! ... . 108 
CRRINT Sein OME LMSEEE haut lethal lest LW od 
CH ERUNNER WITNESS cor temune nen en cir a  nnee bed 
PEUBOY COTORLOU SS LIEB HY) sp Ps ARN fel iets od dO Dea OW 


WORLD AIVISSION OFLA MERIGA) - 2 6oby i ons: | niet 





TET ae Cay tee 









ss 
RA f\ 
“ue i \ ¢ 
Ly ‘i | iM Pu) ; 
> { 1 a 
%} 1a 
: ' 
| 
4 
‘A 
q 
ve i 
Ae 
Chay 
wh 
Now 
\ 1 
' f < Lae i 
? i 0 Pike y * a 
f ae ; ») ' Ing on ‘e Cy Ton ; es 
a ae ee Ly sry 
(PRG PAN ote My 
yl if ie a yi oe aN a Fh 
« x - 
’ a Sa 1 f iy eh 
bu ‘Tk be 
oe, eC We ta 
y } Ww ” ite ny 
‘ ak i 
tA Phi 
re 
; ‘ 4 ie’ hai 
“a yt) 1 
i \ i aa Le , 
Nie | ‘ , 4° 
f a re 
iY, Maar ak pi 0 
bait a eH 
fi i . i Py - 4, 
ET BOG a ee ar) 
‘ OP it ss 4 f 
ea ft i 
Wid Aaa nia \ 
t S pyt \ 
) U id ry j A ly af rn 
he ty Ui), \ tare, AU ONE 
| | i 4 
" ‘ ‘seh 
wii we uA, uf y fia i 


Reentry 





ae oe bat, Hee ea Wh 4%) 


,»* ay) 
i) at eect Hin} 
fs 





‘ MM § 
: : a TF 
a iO ae 
he : Ae : ep as iy 







SOME TIMELESS MESSAGES 
OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 







aa oy ~ ae r Th ~~ ae a 
a bd q it V 
. a Pay , ‘ " fi } hy ie : f ie io 
s5 i] eS ‘ i? 
t . 4 : 
eet, ; > 1 - J +, Lv 
base} : i vy { 7B ) yb 
y Lf 1 i be? M8 y a i 
ON es bane aa ; acre. 
‘on! , UL 
‘ >. _* } wee SBT. 
, 4 A 
i 1 1 i ] f \ 
vy Ns Ui i] h T 
i . | - ‘ 
} ; ; , 
4 } ‘ 4 
‘ ; fs W F 
“\ r pt 
> *4 
i} i A 7 
i s ' : LA ; 2 
f , AD 
1 , 
\ L i ‘ 7 7 
; | sh) ; e 4 : y iY h: A id 
i 4 ; 4 RO > ye a's is Mah q vy’ 
; aE Aaah ae : Te 
ok US a ce 
; LT PAAR CLM he beset yy e's 
y ie Ae. it Dink A 











aT | ’ 
, { 
; 1 
4 
Y 
‘ ‘ _ 
¢! 
i 
. ' 
: hy 
ne , 
if ' ae ¥ as 
v a i 
; wry ALN ae kU ; Me 
’ : 5 Ba oy : pe 
\5 j A ry AAD ets mG : , 
7 grat : 
i720" 
: 
Le”) 
_ 
( 
" 
\ 
d 


MRS. ANNIE DELANO HITCH 
A LIFE OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE 


In the passing of Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch, on 
March 6, 1926, to the higher realms of life and 
service the city of Newburgh parted with its great- 
est Benefactor and the Church of Our Father 
with its most faithful parishioner. All who knew 
and loved her lost a true friend but at the same 
time they gained a blessed memory and a deathless 
influence. 

The city mourned as one family. Flags on pub- 
he buildings and places of business were lowered to 
half mast. Expressions of sorrow and resolutions 
of sympathy poured in upon the stricken house- 
hold from public officials, from many organizations 
and from a host of friends. Hardly a tearless eye 
was to be found anywhere. Men and women and 
children paused to speak a kind word for the one 
who had been kindness personified. During the 
hour of service at the home—‘‘ Algonae,’’ all stores 
were closed as a mark of respect and affection. 
Everywhere the comment was heard that,—‘‘ New- 
burgh has lost its most useful citizen.’’ 

It would not be difficult to grow eloquent and 

I 


Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


speak in superlatives of this rare and beautiful 
personality, but she would not have it so. She 
allowed not her left hand to know what her right 
one was doing. Her life as it is known to those 
among whom she lived and moved and labored 
is its own best interpreter and its own most elo- 
quent eulogy. Nevertheless, in order that those 
of a wider circle may learn of her right to their 
thoughtful consideration and sincere appreciation 
as being a living embodiment of love and of light, 
we will give a brief recital of her public interests 
and benefactions; omitting her numberless deeds 
of charity to unfortunate families and individuals 
and also her countless acts of kindness and gener- 
rosity to her personal friends, which will shine as 
the stars of heaven forever and ever. The range of 
her thought and sympathy was all-inclusive and 
shut out no one because of race, color, religion or 
station. 

Early interested in charity work she joined the 
‘‘State Charities Aid Association’’ and did active 
and efficient service on the Board of Managers 
and as one of the honorary Vice-Presidents. An 
excerpt from the resolutions of the society proves 
how highly were her services valued ;—‘‘In the 
death of Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch, the State 
Charities Aid Association has lost one who, for a 
long period of years, very completely expressed 
in her life, the central purpose of the State Char- 

2 


Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


ities Aid Association. Mrs. Hitch was, in fact, 
one of the pioneers in the Association. Miss Louisa 
Lee Schuyler and Mrs. William B. Rice interested 
her in the work of the newly organized Association 
and she became secretary of the local Visiting 
Committee for the Newburgh City and Town Alms- 
house in 1872, the year in which the State Charities 
Aid Association was organized.”’ 

From this time on her interest never waned 
and she took the initiative in starting organized 
eharity work in Newburgh; the Association 1s now 
housed in a building given by herself and husband. 
When this house was dedicated, in an address in 
which he paraphrased the saying attributed to 
Louis XIV, ‘‘The state, it is I,’’ Judge Hirschberg 
said; ‘‘The Associated Charities, it is Mrs. Hitch.’’ 

The sight of crippled children deeply touched 
the heart of Mrs. Hitch and she sent many of 
them to the Laura Franklin Hospital of New 
York for treatment. She established an agency 
for the care of dependent children: Inaugurated 
‘“The Girl Service League,’’ to care for and pro- 
tect unfortunate girls, and for two years financed 
the movement: For years maintained a private 
kindergarten: Remodeled and added second story 
and equipped with every modern convenience the 
school-house in her part of the city: Helped to 
start ‘‘ Visiting Nurse Society’’ by defraying ex- 
penses of a nurse for several years previous to its 


3 


Mrs. Anme Delano Hitch 


organization: Active worker and generous giver 
to the ‘‘Girl Scouts:’’ Helped to raise $40,000.00, 
giving largely herself, for purchasing lot for 
Maternity Hospital: Built and completely fur- 
nished a beautiful home for the nurses of the city 
hospital at a cost of more than $70,000.00: Greatly 
devoted to the welfare of boys and girls she paid 
more than $40,000.00 for a plot of land and gave 
it to the city for a public playground, and did 
much to establish a second playground in another 
part of the city; a precious saying of hers about 
children will always be prized,—‘‘I do not like 
to see any child lose out entirely in the game of 
life.’’ This larger playground is known as ‘‘The 
Annie Delano Hitch Recreational Park’’ and will 
be an endearing memorial to her sagacity and love 
and loyalty, for which the city can never be too 
grateful. She was a member of ‘‘The National 
Playground Association.’’ . 

As the first citizen of Newburgh Mrs. Hitech now 
occupies a position all her own; a position similar 
to that accorded the late Dr. Edward Everett Hale 
of Boston. There the citizens rose up as one 
people and ealled him blessed, and here the citizens 
rise up and call her blessed. We are justified in 
linking her name with the names of Dr. Samuel 
G. Howe and Dr. Joseph Tuckerman and Miss 
Dorothea L. Dix. 


Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


‘‘So many paths, 

So many Gods, 

So many creeds, 
When just the art of being kind; 
Is all this old world needs.’’ 


And ‘‘The Art of Being Kind’’ ealls for all the 
intelligence, strength, courage, patience, love and 
faith we can summon to our assistance; for it is 
the noblest art in all the world and involves all 
we believe about God, our neighbors and ourselves. 
The highest expression of this divine art is found 
in a life of Christian service. 

A Christian life is a life whose spirit and method 
reproduce as nearly as possible the spirit and 
method of the Christ Life. This spirit and method 
were conspicuous by their presence in her life. 
She practised the divine art of being kind and made 
it her chief concern to go about doing good in the 
spirit of the Master. She lived a life of Christian 
Service. 

Let us know the truth! Her’s was a reinforced 
life. The sources of spiritual power were never 
closed to her reverent and prayerful spirit. She 
expressed her faith in her works. She placed the 
Christian Faith and the Christian Church at the 
centre of her life and activities. She remembered 
the Sabbath Day to keep it holy and never missed 
a service of worship except when ill or absent 


5 





Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


energize, uplift and inspire and to send us forward 
to establish God’s Kingdom of truth, righteousness 
and love in the world and to build the City Beauti- 
ful everywhere. 

She has joined ‘‘The choir invisible of those who 
live in lives made better by their presence; in 
impulses stirred to generosity ; whose music is the 
gladness of the world.’’ And faith and hope and 
love assure us that she lives forever more in God’s 
nearer and more blessed presence. The conser- 
vation of human values is as necessary to our 
lives and happiness as are the conservation of 
energy and the indestructibility of matter. The 
laws of progress rule in the realm of the spirit as 
they rule elsewhere. ‘‘We do not live to die, we 
die to live.’’ ‘‘ Along the path of life we tread; 
they have but gone before.”’ 

Jesus said to his disciples that,—‘‘The Kingdom 
of God is within you.’’ It has been beautifully 
said that,— ‘The life of the spirit is the evidence 
of immortality.’’ A noted philosopher said to his 
dying wife,—‘‘In thine eyes I have seen the Eter- 
nal.’’ ‘‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the 
Father,’’ is the Christian message. 

How true the saying of Dr. Henry VanDyke 
that,—‘‘ There is only one way to get ready for 
immortality and that is to love this life and live 
it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as we 
ean.’’ ‘‘I want to live such a life (exclaimed Dr. 


7 


Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


Phillips Brooks) that if all individuals were living 
it the millennium would be here; nay, heaven 
would be here, the universal presence of God.’’ 
Such sayings as these express perfectly the life 
purpose of Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch. She got 
ready for immortality by loving this life and living 
it bravely and’ cheerfully and faithfully, by prac- 
tising the divine art of being kind, by going about 
doing good and by living A Life of Christian 
Service. 

Do not her last words to the hving—‘‘It is all 
right’’—assure us that in those moments of her 
extreme need,— ‘When for her the one clear eall 
was heard, and that which drew from out the 
boundless deep turns again home;’’ do not these 
words assure us that in those moments she was 
made conscious of God’s approval of her beautiful 
life of love and loyalty and service, and so willing- 
ly, fearlessly, trustingly and victoriously yielded 
up her spirit to Him who doeth all things well? 
Yes! ‘‘It is all right,’’ because she believed as 
we believe that God’s will and ways are better for 
us than anything we ean possibly desire or ask for 
ourselves or our friends. 


‘‘Life! we’ve been long together, 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
’Tis hard to part when friends are dear,— 
Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear; 


8 


Mrs. Annie Delano Hitch 


Then steal away, give little warning, 
Choose thine own time; 

Say not Good-Night,—but in some brighter clime 
Bid me Good-Morning.’’ 


“Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way 

That leads from darkness to the perfect day! 

From darkness and from sorrow of the night 

To morning that comes singing o’er the sea; 

Through love to light! Through light, O God, 
to Thee, 

Who art the love of love, the eternal hight of light.’’ 


A TWENTIETH CENTURY 
CHRISTIAN 


Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, 
Lord, shall enter wto the Kingdom of 
Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my 
Father who is in Heaven.—Matt. 7:21. 


Mu.LtTITuDEs of men and women of all denomina- 
tions and all shades of religious belief are deeply 
concerned over the theological discussions that are 
going on in America at the present time. 

Some are saying that these controversies are all 
a mistake and if what is untrue be left alone it 
will die a natural death. Some seem to think that 
religion is not a subject to be talked about. This 
type of person is well deseribed by Disraeli; ‘‘ As 
for that,’’ said Waldenshare, ‘‘sensible men are 
all of the same religion.’’ ‘‘Pray, what is that?’’ 
inquired the Prince. ‘‘Sensible men never tell,’’ 
was the reply. Others would smother the issues 
in ecclesiastical councils. And still others are 
like the two Boston ladies who, after having heard 
Professor Huxley lecture, held the following 
dialogue: ‘‘Mary, do you think it is possible 
that these terrible things Professor Huxley has 

10 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


been saying can be true?’’ ‘‘ Well,’’ was the reply, 
‘af they are not true, the Lord will bring them 
to naught; but if they are true, they must be 
hushed. up.”’ 

Not any one of these attitudes is equal to the 
situation. If these controversies are to result in a 
large and universal synthesis of thought and be- 
lef we must all assume in their presence the open, 
honest, sympathetic, reverent and courageous atti- 
tude of mind and of heart! 

There is nothing new about these controversies. 
The issues involved have to do with the questions 
of religious freedom, which tore the Church 
asunder in the sixteenth century and which had 
much to do in sending our Forefathers to America 
in 1620. They are the issues that for centuries 
have caused the distinction to be made between the 
conservative and liberal Christian. 

But little progress has been made since the 
Reformation in religious thinking and the churches 
as a whole have failed to adjust themselves to the 
advances made by modern scholarship. The pro- 
phetiec note is not being sounded loud enough to 
be heard within or without the churches, the word 
of power and of authority is not being spoken; 
and so the absurdities and half truths found in 
Catholicism, Protestantism and in the many queer 
Cults that spring up outside of all churches go 
their ways unmolested and unhampered. 

II 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


The churches are being forced against their wills 
to make great and radical changes in both belief 
and polity. The same as the nations are having 
to give up their narrow and provincial spirit and 
find the larger expression of their ideals in a Com- 
monwealth of Humanity, so the churches of all de- 
nominations aré being constrained to give up their 
narrow and provincial spirit of sectarian prejudice 
and find their incentive and inspiration in a faith 
that is large enough to inelude all mankind. Not 
a new religion is needed but a larger and truer 
interpretation of the Christian Faith. 

What is to blame for this confusion and bewilder- 
ment? The doctrine of an infallible Bible is large- 
ly to blame. For instance, if we are obliged to 
accept as true all that is said about Jesus in the 
New Testament we have a mosaic of inconsistencies. 
Jesus wrote nothing and must more often have 
been mis-quoted than quoted rightly. We must 
look for ‘‘Christ above all of his reporters.’’ 

While St. Paul belongs to the immortal heroes of 
the Faith he had in many respects a religion of 
his own. He took the legendary account of Adam’s 
disobedience and moulded it into a theological 
dogma, that dishonored God and Christ and was 
an outrage to reason and common sense. A great 
change came over the Christian Church in the 
year 325, when Constantine made Christianity the 
established religion of the Roman Empire. At this 

Be 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


time the creed forming habit began, that ever 
since has been such an apple of discord in Christen- 
dom. This creed making habit has set aside and 
pushed into the background the historical Jesus. 

Many scholars have called attention to these un- 
toward conditions. It is what Dr. Hatch meant 
when he said that, ‘‘ Christianity has won no great 
victories since its basis was changed.’’ Matthew 
Arnold said that, ‘‘Two things are clear to every 
man with eyes in his head. One is that we cannot 
do without Christianity. The other is that we 
eannot do with Christianity as it is.’’ Dean Me- 
Collester had the same thing in mind when he made 
a distinction between ‘‘The autocracy of theology 
and the Democracy of religion.’’ It is what Dr. 
H. E. Fosdick means when he says that, ‘‘ We 
have a religion about Jesus, not the religion of 
Jesus;’’ and that ‘‘Much of our contemporary 
Christianity is not making people better but 
worse.’’ Many books have been written on this 
subject; one entitled, ‘‘The Man Nobody Knows.”’ 

This is what we as Unitarians have always in- 
sisted upon and have clearly distinguished between 
the religion of authority and the religion of. the 
spirit. For more than one hundred years we have 
been calling attention to the fact that the churches 
were making the teachings of Jesus of no effect 
by their creeds, dogmas and traditions, the same as 
the Seribes were making the teachings of the 


13 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


prophets of no effect by their formal and lifeless 
religious ceremonies. We did not turn our backs 
upon Christianity when we established a denomina- 
tion of our own; we were anti-Trinitarian not anti- 
Christian. We went out because the Orthodoxy 
of that day misinterpreted the mission and message 
of Christ to mankind; we left behind ‘‘The Errors 
of Orthodoxy.’’ We wanted, as Dr. Channing said, 
‘‘Pure Christianity,’’ unadulterated by doctrines 
that were of Greek and Roman extraction. We 
wanted the historical Jesus, the Jesus of ‘‘The 
Sermon on the Mount’’ and of the immortal 
parables in place of metaphysical speculations and 
theological dogmas. 

These misinterpretations of the mission and mes- 
sage of Christ are causing confusion and bewilder- 
ment in the minds of ministers and church workers, 
everywhere, and consequently we have about as 
many definitions of what it means to be a Christian 
as we have denominations in our midst; there are 
at least fifty-seven varieties of answers in America 
as to what constitutes a Christian life. 

The Catholics differ from the Episcopals, the 
Baptists from the Methodists, the Presbyterians 
from the Lutherans and the Universalists and Uni- 
tarians differ from nearly all the other denomina- 
tions. As a result of all this there is not the 
straight forward thinking and plain and honest 
speaking in the pulpit there ought to be. The 


14 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


ministers as leaders of the people are more to 
blame for these conditions than are the people. 
It too often happens that the pulpit is in very 
fact what it has sometimes been ealled, ‘‘The 
Coward’s Castle.’’ Ministers in such pulpits have 
one set of ideas and beliefs for pulpit use and 
another set for their intimate friends; in the pulpit 
when the people ask for bread they are given a 
stone. 

These denominational differences and theological 
controversies are the causes of this confusion and 
bewilderment. And what is sad to contemplate 
is that these many misunderstandings of ‘‘Pure 
Christianity’’ are destroying the influence and 
weakening the authority of the church and religion 
over the lives of men and in the affairs of home, 
school and state. 

The absurdness and pettiness of these sectarian 
divisions and animosities were seen in their true 
hight during the World War, when the men of all 
denominations and of every shade of belief and 
unbelief were thrown together in trench life, at 
the front and as they faced the dangers and trag- 
edies of ‘‘No Man’s Land.’’ 

The War has changed many things but nothing 
more has it changed than the religious views of 
those who bore the brunt of the struggle, and this 
is true of the soldiers on both sides of the conflict. 
The soldier boys and officers of the Allied Army 


T5 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


came to judge each other not by church or creed or 
denominational affiliations; not by profession but 
by performance; not by word alone but by deeds; 
not by any claim of superiority made by Catholic 
over Protestant or by either Protestant or Catholic 
over Jew or Gentile, but simply and solely by the 
quality of life and character and manhood. With 
much fervor a Presbyterian is reported to have said 
of a Jewish Rabbi,—‘‘That man is a real Chris- 
Garis 

And here is what another Presbyterian said of 
his experience at the front. ‘‘Am I a Scotch 
Presbyterian? (he said) Yes, but at the front, in 
France, I got a new vision of hfe and what it 
means. It means service—service for others. I 
am for the simple religion of Jesus Christ. I want 
no man nor creed to come between me and my 
God. We all are serving under the same great 
Commander and are all marching forward and 
upward toward the same destination. The day 
has come for the wiping out of religious intolerance 
and animosities.’’ 

The worst indictment that can be brought against 
these divisions and controversies, with their attend- 
ant confusion and bewilderment, is that they are 
in part and perhaps in larger part than we are 
aware responsible for the disorder and immorality 
of the social order! 

We may well ask ourselves in all seriousness; 

16 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


has a divorcement taken place between Religion 
and Human Life? In vain is it for us to believe 
that the laws of man will be respected and obeyed 
unless first and always the laws of God are sought 
out and respected and obeyed; and in vain is it 
for human laws to be written without any regard 
for divine laws. No one knew this truth better 
than did our Forefathers. They came here to 
find freedom for their religion, not freedom from 
its divine sanctions and its necessary and whole- 
some restraints. No one knew this truth better 
than did the Father of his Country, who said that 
it was hopeless to try to separate morality from 
religion. No one knew this truth better than did 
the great Emaneipator, who was always more 
anxious to be on God’s side than to know that 
God was on his side and for the Northern Cause. 
No one today knows this truth better than the 
present occupant of the White House; a fact that 
seems to be incomprehensible to most writers and 
speakers who are trying to understand the charac- 
ter of Calvin Coolidge and to explain his phenom- 
enal hold upon the confidence and affection of the 
American People. 

It is becoming painfully evident to all rational 
minds that these many divisions and definitions 
of the Christian Faith cannot all be right and that 
some may be partially true and others absolutely 
false. One interpretation of life, one explanation 


17 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


of truth, one definition of religion, one approach 
to the Ultimate Reality is not as good as another, 
and those who say so have no message for the 
times in which they live. If there has been a 
divorcement between religion and life it is because 
there has been a divorcement between the religion 
of the churches and the religion of Jesus Christ; 
it is because we have too much ‘‘Churchanity”’ 
and not enough Christianity. 

This trouble with the church very much resem- 
bles what is known as Autocracy in the State and 
the progress of man demands separation of State 
and Church, and Democracy in both. Autocracy 
is not based upon the desire for truth but upon 
the wish to rule and upon the assumption that 
‘‘What I say three times is true.’’ Old-time 
Orthodoxy is Autocracy in disguise. 

Some causes of the troubles we are discussing 
are, as stated above, the doctrine of an infallible 
Bible, Pauline Theology and the Creed Making 
Habit. Very briefly let us say in addition that the 
old Scheme of Salvation based upon the story of 
the Garden of Eden and the disobedience of Adam, 
with its oft repeated slogan,—‘‘Believe on the 
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved,’’ has 
little if anything in common with the religion of 
the humble Nazarene. The story of Creation, 
the name of Adam, his disobedience, his expulsion 
from Paradise, the imputed sinfulness of the 

18 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


Human Race (‘‘In Adam’s sin we sinned all’’) 
and his own part in this strange and irrational 
scheme are never so much as mentioned in any 
of the genuine sayings of Jesus. The scheme 
dishonors God, Christ and Humanity. When 
Jesus stood up to read for the first time in the 
Synagogue at Nazareth none of these doctrines 
were on his lips, and never were, but he turned 
to the sixty-first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, 
which begins,—‘‘The Spirit of the Lord God is 
upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to 
preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent 
me to bind up the broken hearted.’’ It is equally 
true that the many definitions of what it means to 
be a Christian, found in the writings of such 
leaders as Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, 
John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards (to mention 
only a few) and that came into existence centuries 
after the death of Jesus, have very little if any- 
thing in common with the teachings of the Chris- 
tian Faith. 

The Presbyterian, just mentioned, went into the 
World War with the religion of the Westminster 
Confession of Faith and came out of it with the 
religion of Jesus Christ. Others went into the 
War with the religion of the Nicene Creed, or the 
Thirty-nine Articles of Belief, or with the religion 
of the Five Institutes of Calvinism, or possibly 
with the religion of Jonathan Edwards, and they 


1g 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


may either have come out of the war confused, 
bewildered and skeptical or like our wise Presby- 
terian friend had the good fortune to come out 
with the ‘‘Simple Religion of Jesus Christ.’’ 

The fact is, Friends, that,—The palsied touch 
of the dead hand of dogma and a lifeless tradition 
rests all too heavily upon churches and church 
workers in all too many of our denominations 
and darkens the understanding and seals the lips 
of those who ought to be the religious leaders and 
prophets of mankind. These dead dogmas, if not 
talked about as much as formerly, hover in the 
background as skeletons in the closet, and cast 
an evil spell upon all our thinking, speaking, doing 
and believing. 

Unitarians have maintained and still maintain 
that until the palsied touch of this dead hand 
is replaced by the living touch of the living truth 
of the Christian Faith, a Faith destined to become 
the World Faith, these divisions and controversies 
and this confusion and bewilderment will continue 
to all time to darken the understanding and em- 
bitter the lives of those who profess to be the 
followers of Jesus. 

What we desperately need today is to know what 
it means to be ‘‘A twentieth Century Christian.”’ 
We need a common definition of the Christian 
Faith that will apply just as much to a Catholic 
as to a Protestant, to an Episcopalian as to a Pres- 

20 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


byterian, to a Unitarian as much as to a Baptist. 
Such a definition as a united Christian Church 
can honestly and whole-heartedly endorse and teach 
to its own members and recommend to people 
living in other lands. Sectarianism has met its 
Nemesis in the missionary fields, where it is re- 
vealed to the World in all its unlovely and un- 
christian aspects. 

Obviously, this definition will be based upon the 
personal faith of Jesus in God, in Nature, in human 
hfe, in truth, in duty, in immortality, in love 
(human and divine), in righteousness, in humane 
service, in prayer and in worship and filial obedi- 
ence to the Divine Will; in short, upon what He 
Himself believed to be His message and mission to 
the World and to the Children of Men; and 
supremely, this definition of what it means to be 
a Christian in our own time and generation will 
be largely determined by our knowledge of the 
effect this personal faith of Jesus had upon his 
own life and conduct and happiness! 

If there is one thought that runs like a beautiful 
theme through the entire body of the Christian 
Gospel it is the thought that,—Honesty in belief 
results in honesty of life. According to this Gospel 
there must be a divine harmony between profession 
and performance, else both performance and pro- 
fession will fail of their divine purpose of blessing 
and enriching and ennobling human lives. 

ok 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


This is made plain in many of the timeless mes- 
sages of the Christian Faith, especially in what 
Jesus said about the abundance of the heart, about 
the tree and its fruit. It is implied in what he 
said about doing the will in order to know the 
doctrine, in his teaching that the Kingdom of God 
is within human hearts. It is stated very clearly 
in the words of our text,—‘‘Not every one that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the Will 
of my Father who is in Heaven.”’ 

May we venture upon a possible definition of 
what it means to be a Christian, that might be 
satisfactory to all churches and to all church 
workers of our day? Would it not read something 
like this,—‘ We accept the religion of Jesus Christ 
and pledge ourselves to live in his spirit ?’’ 

We cannot tell the creed-makers that they are 
all dishonest, from Paul and Athanasius to Calvin 
and Edwards, for that would be untrue, but it 
becomes our duty to say to ourselves and to our 
fellowmen that they have been mistaken and ean 
no longer speak for Christianity. How beautifully 
true it is, as Dr. C. C. Everett said that,—‘‘In 
Christianity the whole level of life is lifted!’’ And 
also how true, as Dr. James Martineau said that,— 
‘‘The difference is infinite between the partisan 
of beliefs and the one whose heart is fixed on 
reality !’’ 

22 


A Twentieth Century Christian 


Christianity is supremely the religion of the 
spirit and those who believe in the principles and 
ideals of religious liberty and are able to share 
with their spiritual leader the wonder and reality 
and the majesty of the religious experience 
shall learn the truth that has the power to make 
them free and strong and brave and glad. 

Many worthy, noble and beautiful Christian 
lives are found among the makers of creeds and 
among those who refuse to formulate any state- 
ments of religious belief whatever, but their num- 
ber, we think, is multiplying all too slowly because 
so many professed followers of the Master are 
strangers to the spirit and method of his life. 

These lives, however, wherever found are quietly 
weaving the finer fabric of a higher Civilization. 
We know and are made better by such lives. They 
are the hope of the World. The World is richer or 
poorer as their number increases or decreases. 
They alone have been given the power from On 
High to make such a World as Phillips Brooks 
had in mind when he said in a Lenten sermon 
preached in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Boston,—‘‘TI 
want to live such a life that if every man were 
living it the Millennium would be here, nay, 
Heaven would be here, the universal Presence of 
God.’’ 


23 


THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS 


And it came to pass when Jesus had 
ended these words the people were aston- 
ished at his teachings; for he taught them 
as one having authority and not as their 
Scribes.—Matt. 7 :28-29 


THESE two verses found at the end of the seventh 
chapter of Matthew’s gospel are the concluding 
words of his report of the so-called Sermon on 
the Mount. They are of special significance to us 
for they must have been based upon his own per- 
sonal experience of what occurred not only once 
but what in all probability occurred whenever and 
wherever Jesus met the people face to face and 
spoke to them heart to heart. 

Matthew states that they ‘‘were astonished at 


ey) 


his teachings,’’ and we know that this feeling of 
astonishment on their part meant more than an 
idle curiosity aroused by a passing speaker of 
unusual eloquence; for they believed in him and 
followed him as they had never followed or be- 
lieved in any one before. And according to 
Matthew the people were astonished because Jesus 
‘‘taught them as one having authority and not 
as their Seribes.”’ 
24 


The Authority of Jesus 


In Old Testament times a Scribe was simply one 
who was skilled in writing and in keeping accounts. 
He was a person who communicated to the people 
the wishes and commands of King or Priest, but 
in subsequent times the Scribes were a class of 
people educated for the express purpose of pre- 
serving, interpreting and expounding the Law 
and the Prophets to the people. 

Jewish writers speak of them as the school mas- 
ters of the nation and they state that ‘‘one mode 
in which they exercised their office was, by meet- 
ing the people from time to time, in every town, 
for the purpose of holding familiar discussions and 
raising questions of the law for debate.’’ 

The Jews for centuries had believed that they 
were the chosen people of the Lord, and that the 
patriarchs and prophets of ancient Israel walked 
and talked with God. They believed that Moses 
received the written tablet of the Law from the 
very hand of Jehovah and that the saints and seers 
of their race had received upon Mount Sinai and 
elsewhere direct revelations from the Eternal. 

These beliefs had been handed down from 
generation to generation and it was the duty of 
the Scribes. to protect and preserve this mass of 
ancient scripture and tradition and pass it on to 
each succeeding generation unchanged in word, 
letter or even vowel point. 

This, then, was the religious background of the 


25 


The Authority of Jesus 


Seribe and these sacred writings of his Hebrew 
ancestry his credentials. They reveal to us the 
sources of his authority. His was the authority 
of written documents sanctified by long usage and 
dignified by daily and weekly services in Temple 
and Synagogue. 

Into the midst of this religious formalism came 
the humble Nazarene. While he shared with the 
Seribes the same religious background and ignored 
nothing in it that was of real value, yet, how 
different were his credentials and how different 
were the sources of his authority! 

The authority of Jesus was not conferred upon 
him by the sanctity of written documents, of of- 
ficial position or honored tradition. His was not 
the office of merely interpreting and expounding 
what had been written. His was not the simple 
duty of a mere copyist. It was his conscious mis- 
sion to restore the prophetic note of Israel in the 
life of a people who were suffering from spiritual 
impoverishment; suffering because they had lost 
sight of the vision and were strangers to the re- 
ligious experience which had from time immemorial 
led their forefathers as a cloud by day and a pillar 
of fire by night. 

Jesus told the Seribes and Pharisees that while 
they prided themselves as sitting on the seat of 
Moses at the same time they bound heavy burdens 
of useless rules and regulations on the shoulders 


26 


The Authority of Jesus 


of men which they themselves were unwilling to 
lift, even with their little finger; furthermore, he 
told them that they had made the word of God 
of no effect by their traditions. He did not read 
to the people from the Law but when he stood up 
for the first time in the Synagogue at Nazareth 
to read he selected a passage from the writings of 
the prophet Isaiah. He even dared to contradict 
old sayings and give new ones instead,—‘‘It is 
written that you should hate, but I say you should 
not hate but love your enemy,’’ and with a deeper 
feeling of love in his heart than the world had ever 
known he said,—‘*‘ A new commandment I give unto 
you that ye love one another as I have loved you;”’ 
here the emphasis is on the word ‘‘I.”’ 

Jesus stood forth before the people in opposition 
to the Seribes and their teaching and example and 
talked to them not about a golden past in which 
God spoke to a chosen few of his children, but of 
the immediate present and of a future in which 
God lives and speaks forevermore in and through 
the beauties and the marvels of the world of Nature 
and supremely in and through the lives of men 
and women and little children. 

‘‘These Seribes’’ said Dean Hodges ‘‘ were copy- 
ists. Their business was to write and rewrite not. 
their own ideas, nor their independent conclusions 
or convictions, but the words of wise men of former 
generations. They had no intention to contribute 


27 


The Authority of Jesus 


anything to the religion of their day. They had no 
criticism upon the past in the light of new ex- 
perience, new reflection, new instruction from God. 
They were concerned only to repeat what they 
had been taught and to get their disciples to repeat 
it accurately, in their turn.’’ 
‘‘Beware’’ exclaimed Emerson 


‘ 


‘when the great 
God lets loose a thinker on this planet. It is as 
when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, 
and no man knows where it will end.’’ And so say 
we when we eall to remembrance what Christ’s 
coming into the world has meant to Humanity. 
Here was more than a thinker; here was a great 
and sublime personality, commissioned from On 
High to lead the members of the entire human 
family into the full possession of their divine 
birthright. 

The authority of the Seribe was derived from 
external sources, from sources outside of himself. 
It was an authority of the letter and not of the 
spirit. 

The authority of Jesus was derived from sources 
within his own being. It was an authority of the 
spirit and not of the letter. He spoke with an 
authority greater than that of the Seribes because 
his teachings were the expression of his own re- 
ligious experience; and after all is said, there is 
no greater authority than this known among the 
children of men. 


28 


The Authority of Jesus 


We have not as yet been able to fathom, to the 
satisfaction of all, the nature of Jesus and have 
hardly begun to analyze the secret of his person- 
ality and power. Most of the explanations so far 
put forth do not explain and leave us in the dark- 
ness and ignorance and superstitions of primitive 
times. 

It is because the nature of Jesus and that of 
humanity are essentially one; it is because we 
differ from him in degree not in kind that there 
is any valid reason for expecting to find the secret 
of his authority over the thought and life of man- 
kind. The one and great incentive that gives 
zest and reality to our inquiry is this,—that in our 
hope of discovering what was fundamental, true 
and abiding in the life of Jesus we hope at the 
same time to find the correct interpretation of 
our own lives and the secret of our own existence. 
It is true that just so far as man has failed to 
understand Jesus he has failed to understand him- 
self, 

In Shakespeare’s play, King Lear, Kent says to 
the King,—‘‘ You have that in your countenance 
which I would fain call master.’’ 

‘‘What’s that?’’ inquires King Lear. 

Kent replies,—‘‘ Authority.’’ 

These words of the Dramatist call our attention 
to the many manifestations of authority there are 
in human lives. Behind all great historical move- 


29 


The Authority of Jesus 


ments, secular or sacred, there has stood one or 
more dominating personalities, men of strong con- 
victions and indomitable wills. Underlying every 
undertaking; controlling every enterprise and 
swaying the movements of our social life we find 
personality at work and exerting an authority 
more or less commanding. Turn to the political 
arena, to the field of business, or to the realms of 
intellectual and ethical life and activity and we 
are met by the same fact. 

Even a mere positive man who believes he is 
firm in his principles when he is only obstinate 
in his prejudices possesses a certain kind of author- 
ity which takes very well with credulous and un- 
trained minds. 

Mental superiority regardless of a man’s position 
in society always adds weight to his words. Men 
of unusual talents; those blessed by special en- 
dowments; those having rare gifts of expression 
in any direction; these exert an authority com- 
mensurate with their greatness, in any land and 
among any people. 

The most evident purpose at work in the life of 
Humanity appears to be to create personalities 
that shall be dominated by great ideas and con- 
trolled by the eternal principles of justice, mercy 
and truth. The stronger and deeper the person- 
ality the deeper and richer the life of man. 

As we look a little more closely into the nature 


30 


The Authority of Jesus 


of personality, as we know it to be, the personality 
of Jesus may stand forth in a clearer light and we 
may thereby be helped to a better understanding 
of the sources of his authority. 

What could he have meant who wrote that,— 
‘The reason why men do not obey you,’’ that is 
do not have confidence in you, ‘‘is because they 
see the mud at the bottom of your eye.’’ What 
is meant by this mud at the bottom of one’s eye? 

Is it not the result of entertaining ulterior 
motives, selfish purposes and ignoble ambitions in 
the heart? Is it not produced by closing the mind 
to truth and honesty and sincerity? Of disre- 
garding the higher appeals of the spirit? Of re- 
maining cold and indifferent to a needy world 
for love and disinterested service? Yes, it is all 
this and more and worse. It is by the absence 
from personality of certain rare and indispensable 
elements and the presence in personality of certain 
bad and harmful elements that explain this mud 
at the bottom of man’s eye. This, we may infer, 
is what the writer meant to imply was the reason 
why men do not have confidence in each other; 
the reason why men do not trust each other as 
much as they would if these wrong conditions 
did not exist. 

Can we not say that herein is found the chief 
reason why one person has more authority than 
another; the reason why one person exerts more 


31 


The Authority of Jesus 


influence over my life and over your lives and 
over the life of Humanity than another does! 

The divine plan of the creative life in man is 
unmistakable; a divine dissatisfaction, a vital urge 
is felt in human hearts; forward is the divine 
command; it is surely meant that out of the diffi- 
culties, struggles, sorrows and temptations of our 
lives victory is to be achieved, progress is to be 
made, character is to be fashioned and our lives 
themselves enlarged, deepened and ennobled. 

Character we believe to be the flower and fruit 
of personality. Personality unalloyed by the baser 
materials of selfishness and sin. Personality made 
strong by the exercise of sincerity in thought, 
word and deed. Personality made tender and true 
by the outgoing of self in love and service for the 
unfortunate. Personality touched with emotion 
for all that is true, beautiful, lovely and of good 
report. Personality consciously and devoutly shap- 
ing itself day by day and year by year, through 
good report and ill report, through labor, patience, 
sacrifice, love, service and faith into the image 
and likeness of the great religious ideals that go 
before mankind as a cloud by day and a pillar of 
fire by night: Ideals that interpret the human in 
terms of the divine and translate the ‘‘Seen’’ as 
the temporal and the ‘‘Unseen’’ as the eternal: 
Ideals that enable the pilgrims of Eternity to walk 
in the darkness even as in the light. 


32 


The Authority of Jesus 


This is character and character is the living 
embodiment of the living truth. Character is the 
last and highest expression of personality. Charac- 
ter is personality made conscious of its divine birth- 
right. Character is synonymous with an honest 
life, and an honest man is not only ‘‘the noblest 
work of God’’ but is also the most indispensable 
factor in the progress of mankind. Again, charac- 
ter is synonymous with the good life and it has 
been beautifully said that the good life ‘‘Is the 
ripe fruit earth holds up to heaven.’’ 

In a very real sense and in a very deep sense 
such was the personality, the character, the life 
of Jesus. He spoke as one having authority of the 
most compelling kind beeause his life was attuned 
to the sublime harmonies of Heaven and Earth, 
of the Human and the Divine. 

The Scribes were largely concerned, as we have 
said, with the letter of the law and not with the 
spirit of life. The people went to them for rules 
of conduct and for the directions regarding the 
petty round of daily and hourly activities; the 
weightier matters of human life and human re- 
lationships and the cultivation of spiritual power 
were being neglected. 

Jesus spoke with an authority greater than that 
of the Scribes because his religious experience, 
his consciousness of God’s presence in the world 
about him and in human hearts was greater than 


age 


The Authority of Jesus 


theirs; it was a first hand experience, as real to 
him as it was personal and profound. The people 
were astonished at his teachings because they 
saw in him a living witness to the truth he pro- 
claimed. His whole being was permeated through 
and through with the ‘‘Good News’’ he was asking 
his fellowmen-to accept and believe and apply to 
their own daily lives. There are a thousand people 
in the world today who ean tell what were good to 
be done to one who follows his own teaching. Un- 
til this order is reversed there will be small chance 
for individual growth and social progress. 

If Jesus had spoken on his own authority alone 
he would have had less influence than the very 
Seribes themselves. The secret of his power and 
authority is found in the fact that he spoke as 
one whose personality was constantly being rein- 
forced from the eternal sources of spiritual life 
and power. He spoke and lived as one who had 
received many messages of the spirit. He said, 
‘‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.’’ 
‘‘Tf any man will do His will he shall know the 
doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak 
of Myself.’’ ‘‘I am not alone for the Father is 
with Me.’’ ‘‘Thy will not mine be done.’’ ‘‘ Father 
into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’’ 

The authority of Jesus came to Him supremely 
through His humility, filial submission and ab- 
solute obedience to the will of his heavenly Father. 


34 


The Authority of Jesus 


as that will was revealed to him in the highest 
promptings and premonitions of his own inner 
consciousness; and, let us repeat, no greater 
authority than this has ever been made known 
to the children of men. 

Nothing truer or more exhaustive has ever been 
said of Jesus than was said by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson in his Divinity School Address of 1838. 
‘* Jesus Christ,’’ he said, ‘‘belonged to the true 
race of prophets. He saw with open eye the 
mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, 
ravished with its beauty, he lived in it and had 
his being there. Alone in all history he estimated 
the greatness of man. One man was true to what 
is in you and me. 

‘‘He saw that God inearnates himself in man 
and evermore goes forth anew to take possession 
of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime 
emotion ‘I am divine, through me, God acts; 
through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; 
or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now 
Linke 

If we had a complete account of the lfe of 
Jesus and allowed his life to speak for itself many 
theories and explanations of his nature and being 
would probably never be heard of again, and at 
the same time we should learn of the truer and © 
deeper meanings and worth of our own individual 
lives that we now so miserably fail to understand 


ve 


The Authority of Jesus 


and appreciate. We should find, I am quite sure, 
that the excellencies of his nature came through 
forces and agencies forever operative in the life 
of our common Humanity. 

The reason why Jesus had such authority during 
his lifetime and why it is still growing in the 
world is because of what we have been saying and 
also because no motive of self-centred ambition or 
love of notoriety can be found for His having lived 
and done as he did. He eared nothing for 
authority or popularity as such, but he cared 
supremely for the happiness and well being of 
his fellowmen. He had much to say about the 
sacredness of human life and human relationships. 
His was the inductive method of reasoning. He 
argued from the known to the unknown, from man 
to God and not from God to man as most of his 
followers since have been doing. ‘‘If ye love not 
your brother whom ye have seen how can ye love 
God whom ye have not seen.’’ He argued from 
human kindness to divine kindness, from human 
justice to divine justice, from human love to divine 
love and from human life to divine life. 

If martyrdom ever was in fashion, as in sub- 
sequent times it is spoken of as almost having been, 
it surely was not so at the time Jesus lived. No 
one before had ever died for just what Jesus 
stood for. Many had lived and died for mistaken 
notions and abstract truths. Many had met death 

36 


The Authority of Jesus 


as calmly and as bravely as he, but few if any 
ever died for so large a class of people as did 
Jesus. He was the first world citizen and the first 
world martyr to appear in the life of Humanity. 
He was the first one to overcome the world by 
first overcoming himself and so earned the right 
and the authority to lead all Mankind into the 
full possession of their divine heritage. 

Socrates might be put to death and the sincere 
mourner be the philosopher. Israel’s sons and 
daughters had been sacrificed but for the purpose 
of appeasing God’s wrath or invoking his good 
will. Jesus died not as a wronged philosopher, 
not as the long expected Messiah of his people; 
nor did he give his life to appease an angry God 
and save a lost Humanity. 

No! He died to preserve the sacredness of human 
nature to Mankind. He died as its most worthy 
representative. His life was offered on the altar of 
sacrifice that the unworthy and unlovely elements 
might be removed from the inner life of man and 
that man’s consciousness, in which he said the 
Kingdom of God was to be established, might 
bring forth better manhood, purer womanhood, 
nobler life and character and a diviner personality. 

‘‘And it came to pass when Jesus had ended 
these words the people were astonished at his 
teachings; for he taught them as one having 
authority and not as their Scribes.’’ 


37 


The Authority of Jesus 


‘*Yes: thou art still the life; thou art the way 
The holiest known,—light, hfe and way of heaven; 
And they who dearest hope, and deepest pray, 
Toil by the light, life, way, which Thou hast given.’’ 


38 


TRUTH AND FREEDOM 


Ye shall know the truth and the truth 
shall make you free.—John 8:32 


JESUS was saying to his fellow-countrymen that 
the truth that had made him free could make 
them free. Some of his people would not listen 
to this because they believed that as children of 
Abraham they were already free. We have Abra- 
ham for our father, they said to him, ‘‘Art Thou 
greater than our father Abraham?’’ ‘‘Art Thou 
greater than our father Jacob who gave us the 
well ?”’ 

Jesus had no contention with them regarding 
the truth itself, only as he tried to teach them 
its real nature and man’s approach to the same, 
but he was grieved to see that they did not under- 
stand the difference between its letter and its 
spirit and that their blind devotion to the Law 
and the Prophets and their formal ceremonial 
observances had made them slaves of the past 
and prevented them from being children of the 
light and prophets of the future. In brief, He 
told them that their unyielding adherence to old- 
time beliefs and customs and traditions had kept 


39 


Truth and Freedom 


them from knowing the living truth and being 
made free, brave, glad and strong by its all con- 
quering power in their minds and hearts. 

With the Master of all hearts and minds we 
are coming to believe that man is slowly being 
made free as he learns more about himself and 
the world in which he lives; as he learns to distin- 
ouish between fact and fancy, sentiment and senti- 
mentalism, appearance and reality, between the 
passing and the abiding states of selfconsciousness, 
and the fever of the blood and the fervor of the 
soul; and supremely he becomes free as in his 
own life and conduct he is honest and sympathetic 
with his fellowmen and humble and obedient in 
the presence of the Eternal. 

All truth is saered. All truth has a practical 
and spiritual utility in our every day life, from 
any fact about an atom to any fact about the 
Ultimate Reality of the Universe. | 

Human life has been enriched by all discoveries 
of the truth seeker. First the truth has made the 
truth seeker free and human perversity has gone 
to work to put him to death because he was greater 
than our father Abraham, but the truth remains 
and is never lost. 

We are wrong in assuming that decause religious 
and ecivie affairs have been so long and largely 
under the control of ecclesiasticism that all the per- 
secution of the truth seeker has been done by the 


40 


Truth and Freedom 


church, while in reality the truth seeker has been 
in disfavor everywhere and in all walks of life. 
This is mostly due to the fact that he breaks away 
from conventional standards of thought; he is 
original in his imagination and boldly declares that 
there are larger and still greater revelations in 
store for mankind. He is despised and rejected 
because he disturbs their intellectual house-keep- 
ing; they think he is giving them ashes for beauty, 
but after many years they learn that it is not so, 
and that he has given them instead ‘‘ Beauty for 
ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment 
of praise for the spirit of heaviness.”’ 

A steadfast reliance upon truth, its reality and 
integrity and sacredness should become the life 
long habit of all lives, beginning especially with 
child hfe; without the truth seeking spirit and the 
willingness to go wherever it may lead man has 
little chance of personal or social progress. 

Dr. Oliver Wendall Holmes was an ardent lover 
of truth and so is his son, Justice Holmes of the 
Supreme Bench; a beautiful incident was recently 
told of him. He was in the Congressional Library 
and was taking considerable pains in looking up 
references and required much assistance from the 
Librarian and others and finally he turned to 
them and said,—‘‘I seem to be causing you a lot 
of extra work but we have a most important matter 
before the Judges to pass upon and there is nothing 

41 


Truth and Freedom 


between the Supreme Court and God, so you see 
we must be right.”’ 

In speaking of the differences between truth and 
falsehood in his ‘‘ Autocrat at the Breakfast Table’’ 
Dr. Holmes illustrated his meaning in a very strik- 
ing manner by comparing truth to that which is 
square and solid like a cube, something not easily 
moved, firm and abiding; and falsehood he com- 
pared to that which is round like a marble, easily 
moved, unstable and unreliable. 

‘‘“When we are as yet small children’’ he said, 
‘‘there comes to us a youthful angel holding in 
his right hand cubes, like dice, and in his left 
spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless 
ivory and on each is written in letters of gold— 
TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and 
spotted beneath with a dark crimson flush above, 
where the light falls on them, and in a certain 
aspect you can make out upon every one of them 
the three letters—LIK. 

‘‘The child to whom they are offered very prob- 
ably elutches both. The spheres are the most 
convenient things in the world; they roll with the 
least possible impulse just where the child would 
have them. The cubes will not roll at all; they 
have a great talent for standing still, and always 
keep right side up. But very soon the young 
philosopher finds that things which roll so easily 
are very apt to roll into the wrong corner and 


42 


Truth and Freedom 


to get out of his way when he most wants them, 
while he always knows where to find the others, 
which stay where they are left. Thus he learns, 
thus we learn to drop the streaked and speckled 
globes of falsehood and to hold fast the white 
angular blocks of truth. 

‘But then comes Timidity, and after her Good 
Nature, and last of all Polite Behavior, all insist- 
ing that truth must roll or nobody ean do anything 
with it; and so the first with her coarse rasp and 
the second with her broad file and the third with 
her silken sleeve do so round off and smooth and 
polish the snow-white cubes of truth that, when 
they have got a little dingy by use, it becomes hard 
to tell them from the rolling spheres of falsehood.’’ 

Timidity, Good Nature and Polite Behavior 
often allow falsehoods, private wrongs and public 
abuses to go unchallenged ; they create conventional 
standards of thought and life against which it is 
difficult for right and justice to prevail. There is, 
however, a certain timidity about accepting new 
truth from anywhere and from anybody that is 
quite wholesome; perhaps the word to use here is 
not timidity but caution. Unless there are good 
and sufficient reasons for giving up what we al- 
ready hold as true it is folly to do so. A truth 
or any fact must be able to stand the test of time 
and of human experience before it is fit for wide 
spread acceptance. 


43 


Truth and Freedom 


Men drift away from the main current of living 
truth and float or row about in little eddies of 
stagnant waters instead of keeping in the main 
stream which flows onward to the open sea. The 
erank and the truth seeker have very little in com- 
mon; the crank has been described as a person 
who sees one thing clearly but he sees it out of all 
relation to everything else. 

The real progress of mankind is found in the 
fact that as the years pass and as the centuries 
glide into history the average man is becoming 
a wiser and a better and a nobler being. We 
would not have to go back a thousand years to see 
that for one man who was educated and able to 
assume the duties of society then, now there are 
hundreds and thousands of such individuals. One 
reason why we have fewer great men today is 
because the average intelligence and ability has 
been raised. 

The farther back in time we go the greater the 
inequality. Formerly the masses were easily 
dominated by a strong and commanding person- 
ality; they did very little thinking for themselves 
and ate the crumbs which fell from the master’s 
table. It is growing harder and harder for the 
lone individual to make a name for himself in any 
of the various walks of life, because he finds others 
there who are as able and often more able than 
himself. 


44 


Truth and Freedom 


In this condition lies the hope of Democracy, of 
Civilization and of Religion; not that the excep- 
tional person shall or ever will vanish from among 
mankind but that there shall be such an elevation 
in the multitudes that all individuals may in 
larger and ever larger ways become capable and 
worthy of enjoying what heretofore only the few 
and favored children of men have enjoyed. The 
authority is passing over from the individual to 
the people and today the ideal human being, the 
one loved and honored above all others, is the per- 
son who, in a disinterested and loyal spirit, is the 
servant of Humanity. 

‘‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall 
make you free.’’ 

Do we not often think just the opposite is more 
apt to be the case? Do we not say,—Ye shall 
know the truth and it shall take away your free- 
dom. It will make you a slave to an endless round 
of duties, of cares and responsibilities. It means 
study, investigation, toil, trial, trouble, self-denial 
and self-control. 

With Pilate we may even ask,—‘What is 
truth?’’? Is it not a delusion; a shadow on the 
mountain side; you try to grasp it and it is gone 
only to appear a little farther up? Is it the banner 
with the strange devise that the youth carries to 
the mountain top of human attainment and dying 
holds in his icy hands, sping with his expiring 

45 


Truth and Freedom 


breath ‘‘Excelsior?’’ It is indeed a banner with 
a strange devise but its strangeness has never 
lessened man’s belief in its divine reality and 
worth or kept him from being a truth-seeker. 

If truth comes to us with the olive branch of 
love and peace in one hand in the other she bears 
the sword of the spirit, and it is a double edged 
weapon, finer than any Damascus blade; a blade 
that cuts both ways sparing neither the individual 
nor society. For the eall of truth is the eall of 
life; it 1s a call to heoric action. It separates the 
forces of iniquity from those of integrity. It calls 
the statesman into conflict with the party spoils- 
man and all enemies of the Social Order. It calls 
the loyal citizen into conflict with intemperance, 
immorality and lawlessness. It makes the holding 
of public office a high and sacred trust, to be given 
only to the most reliable, temperate and efficient 
men and women. 

It ealls for a body of men in every community 
so firmly united upon the great issues of a growing 
Republie that all those in office shall feel such 
a moral support in the exercise of their duties 
that they shall willingly and fearlessly carry out 
the desires and ideals of their constituents. Yes, 
the eall of truth is the eall of life and of religion. 
It is heard in the highways and byways, in human 
hearts and human society. 

The first great lesson that we need to learn in 


46 


Truth and Freedom 


this matter is that truth is something large and 
grand and sublime; that it demands the open and 
teachable, the unbiased and unprejudiced mind. 
It demands not only the open mind but it demands 
the absolute trust of the person in its reality; in 
its being at one with that which is universal and 
eternal. 

Kepler, the great astronomer said in the joy of 
discovery,— ‘Oh God, I thank Thee that I think 
Thy thoughts after Thee.’’ We may well say that 
mankind so far has thought a few of God’s 
thoughts after Him and that these have been of 
such a nature as to kindle in his bosom nothing 
short of a divine passion for larger and larger 
revelations. 

In the life and writings of Dr. Holmes his sense 
of humor never prevented him from being a 
prophet of truth. At one time he was talking 
with a theological student who expressed some ap- 
prehension as to what course he ought to follow if 
he could no longer believe the things taught by his 
denomination. The Doctor advised him to look 
well to the pumps and if the ship leaked too much 
to abandon her. The young man thought that 
by following this course some permanent injury 
might be done to truth itself. 

Whereupon the wise physician and author said 
to him,—‘‘I did not know that truth was such an 
invalid. Does not Mr. Bryant say that ‘Truth 


47 


Truth and Freedom 


gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while 
error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger’?’’ 
This is what John Milton, the great apostle of free- 
dom, meant when he said,—‘‘ Who ever knew Truth 
put to the worse in a free and open encounter. 
For who knows not that Truth is strong next to 
the Almighty.” 

Our part then is not to be overanxious or fearful 
about the truth itself but we are to be supremely 
concerned about our attitude toward truth. We 
are to use great caution in accepting what anybody 
and everybody may happen to think or say about 
the great problems of life. On the other hand 
we are to use a like caution in rejecting what 
good and wise men and women say they have 
thought and experienced. 

The men and women who have been able to get 
outside of their own shadows and able to transcend 
their personal dislikes and _ jealousies, their 
prejudices and selfishness; to such persons we may 
go as to those having authority; the words of the 
Master and of the great teachers of all ages must 
be our guides in the ways of knowledge and of life. 
Happy day when we too shall see as they saw and 
learn from their wisdom to think and judge for 
ourselves, and at first hand experience the free- 
dom of the truth. 

We are wrong in supposing that the man of 
positive science, the one who is an expert in the 


48 


Truth and Freedom 


knowledge of the physical world has any advantage 
over the religious man. The warfare between 
science and religion, for well-informed minds, is 
over forever. We are coming to see that religion 
may be the warp and science the woof which enter 
into the garment of truth man is weaving, and that 
by joining their forces and influences man may 
quicken his advance from the known to the un- 
known; and that the individual through his knowl- 
edge of matter and his knowledge of spirit may 
emerge from the darkness of ignorance and super- 
stition into the light of understanding and true 
wisdom. 

This brings us to the one great lesson that Jesus 
was trying to impress upon the minds and hearts 
of his people when he said to them,—‘‘Ye shall 
know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’’ 

Jesus said that he was greater than Abraham 
because his truth was larger than Abraham’s. We 
are not to forget that he also said that,—‘‘I am 
not come to destroy the law or the prophets but 
to fulfill.’’ The fanatic cuts himself loose from 
the past and calls men to believe in his truth be- 
cause of its very newness and strangeness. The 
truth-seeker allies himself, as did Jesus, with ‘‘all 
the good the past hath had’’ and calls men to a 
knowledge and obedience to truth that is larger 
and grander and older than the human race itself. 
He does not say that there is nothing new under 


49 


Truth and Freedom 


the sun, but he does say that there is nothing old, 
and that truth is forever young and a tremendous 
reality. His motto is the same as the Apostle 
Paul’s—‘‘ Prove all things, hold fast that which is 
good.”’ 

It is often said that we are living in a practical 
age; by this is sometimes meant that it is an age 
in which materialistic tendencies are in the ascend- 
ency. However true or untrue this may me, and 
it is much truer than we wish it were, we may 
well belive that it is an age in which everything 
in the whole range of human history and present 
day life is being tested as never before in the light 
of the every day experiences of men and women. 

This is a tendency that we should welcome for 
it can produce only good results when fully ad- 
hered to, for truth and experience are inseparable. 

If we know better than we do; if great truths 
apprehended and not lived up to have been the 
ehief stumbling-blocks in the way of human 
progress; it is also true that we often do better 
than we know; and so possibly out of these two 
conditions of knowing and doing and doing and 
knowing; out of their action and reaction upon 
our thought and life we may be finding our way 
onward and upward in the great seale of Universal 
life and Reality. 

Is it not, after all is said, the truth that is known 
and loved and obeyed that can make us free and 


50 


Truth and Freedom 


glad and brave and strong? This is what Jesus 
taught. It is the secret of the Christ life. It is 
as Rev. George MacDonald once said,—‘‘ Not any 
abstract truth, not all abstract truth, not truth its 
very metaphysical self, held by the purest insight 
into entity, can make any man free; but the truth 
done, the truth loved, the truth lived by the man; 
the truth of and not merely in the man himself; 
the honesty that makes the man himself a child 
of the honest God.’’ 

Through obedience to the known laws of navi- 
gation the sailor finds his freedom from the 
breakers of the shore and the dangers of the deep; 
let him say I will ignore the chart and the com- 
pass and his way to freedom is cut off. 

Through obedience to the known laws of astro- 
nomical observation the astronomer finds his free- 
dom from the crude notions of astrology and is able 
to interpret to human minds our place in the Solar 
System and make plain to human understanding 
the wonderful movements of planets, satilites and 
stars and the phenomena of day and night, of 
summer and winter. 

Through obedience to the known laws of physical, 
electrical and mechanical science the scientist and 
inventor bring many of the great forces of Nature 
under their control and command them to do their 
bidding and thus bring freedom, profit and 
pleasure to multitudes of men and women. 


5! 


Truth and Freedom 


Through obedience to the known laws of agri- 
culture and the introduction of proper machinery 
the tiller of the soil finds his way out of servitude 
into freedom; his power is multiplied and his life | 
is made larger and happier. 

Through obedience to the known laws of health 
the human race can free itself from many of the 
ills to which man is subject. 

Through obedience to the known laws of thought 
and states of human consciousness individuals can 
free themselves from many a delusion that has 
kept multitudes of men and women in abject men- 
tal, moral and spiritual poverty and servitude all 
the days of their lives. 

Through obedience to the known laws of human 
brotherhood, profit sharing and arbitration the 
capitalist and laborer would no longer be in op- 
position to each other and would both be free to 
contribute more largely than they now do to the 
common welfare and happiness of their fellowmen. 

Through obedience to the known laws and ways 
of the spirit, of faith, love and spiritual heroism, 
the human soul can enter into communion with 
the prophetic soul of the Master and with all holy 
souls that have lived since the world began. 

The square blocks of truth cannot be rounded 
and never are rounded off by man, however hard 
he may try. He has learned through experience 
and experiment that until they are placed in their 


52 


Truth and Freedom 


proper position with the other building material 
of character, their sharp corners remain sharp 
and tear and wound both his hands and his heart. 
He finds that freedom consists in placing them 
where they belong. 

Jesus taught men that the most important con- 
dition for knowing the truth was the open and re- 
ceptive mind, the childlike, teachable, humble and 
obedient spirit in the presence of all truth. 

He was more anxious about his attitude towards 
truth than about truth itself; he was more anxious 
to feel that he was on God’s side than to know 
that God was on his side, for his confidence in 
truth was the same as his confidence in God. He 
exercised great caution in accepting or rejecting 
what he found in the teachings of his people. He 
could truthfully say ‘‘Ye have made the word 
of God of no effect by your traditions’’ and as 
truthfully declare that he came not to destroy 
but to fulfill. 

His was a free, brave, humble, strong and obedi- 
ent soul, not bound by the letter of truth but 
living from moment to moment in the freedom of 
the truth on the highest altitudes of the spirit; 
ever believing that God never leaves Himself with- 
out witness in the world or in the hearts of His 
children, and that He scatters His divine revela- 
tions all along the straight and narrow way of 
toil, of trial, of trust, of struggle, of duty, of 
prayer, of worship, of love and of service. 


53 


CHRIST’S INTERPRETATION 
OF GOLDEN RULE 


All things whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them; for this rs the law and the prophets. 
—Matt. 7:12. 


THE Golden Rule did not originate with Jesus, 
but it may as well have done so, for it had never 
meant so much to anyone using it previous to his 
time as it came to mean to him. He found it 
an indefinite and unhonored rule of conduct, as apt 
to be used in justifying a low as well as a high 
standard of living, and re-interpreted it as a law 
of the Higher Life, gave it a universal significance 
and left it among the timeless messages of his 
gospel of truth and love and service. 

Certain forms of the Golden Rule are found in 
the Rabbinical writings of the Jews, such as,—‘‘ Do 
to no man that which thou hatest.’’ Rabbi Hillel, 
at whose feet Jesus sat as a boy and growing youth, 
said of the Rule that, —‘‘It is the principle com- 
mandment of the law. All the rest is only com- 
mentary.’’ The Rule is not found anywhere in the 
writings of the Old Testament. 

From the way Hillel mentioned the Golden Rule 


54 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


we learn that there were those at the time and 
previous to the time Jesus lived who were familiar 
with the saying. It is said that the question was 
once put to Aristotle, who lived about the middle 
of the fourth century before Christ, how we ought 
to behave to our friends and that the answer he 
gave was this,—‘‘As we should wish our friends 
to behave to us.’’ It is recorded that Thales, who 
lived more than three hundred years before Aris- 
totle, when asked how men might live most vir- 
tuously and most justly replhed,—‘‘If we never do 
ourselves what we blame in others.’’ In the fourth 
eentury before Christ Isocrates, one of the ten 
famous Athenian orators once said,— ‘What it 
would make you angry to suffer from anybody 
else, that do not to others.’’ 

When a disciple asked Confucius about benev- 
olence he replhied,—‘‘It is love to all men,’’ and 
again he said,—‘‘My doctrine is easy to under- 
stand,’’ and his chief disciple added,—‘‘It consists 
only in having the heart right and in loving one’s 


neighbor as one’s self.’’ He was asked,—‘‘Is there 
one word which may serve as a rule for all life?’’ 
and answered,—‘‘Is not reciprocity such a word? 


What you do not like when done to yourself, do 
not do that to others.”’ 

These comparisons prepare us for the larger 
meanings Christ put into a common and familiar 
saying which had been in circulation among many 


a 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


peoples for many centuries but which had seldom 
been regarded other than as of secondary impor- 
tance ; the chief thing that Christ did was to change 
it from a negative to a positive command, from 
a rule of conduct to a law of life. 

The secrets of many hearts were revealed through 
Jesus because-he possessed above all others a divine 
power which enabled him instinctively to get at the 
very inner meaning of many great and universal 
principles of life and conduct which had for 
thousands of years been but vaguely understood if 
understood at all. And where he far transcended 
the mightiest of all the prophets and philosophers 
and teachers of the world was in his unique and 
straightforward application of these principles first 
to his own life and then to the lives of his fellow- 
men. 

It is obvious that the saying—‘‘ As ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them,’’ 
has less meaning to one whose valuation of life 
is low than to one whose valuation is high. What 
one thinks and believes about himself, about others 
and about the life Divine; these are all determining 
factors in his actual conception of conduct, of duty 
and responsibility ; in fact they are the determin- 
ing factors in his application of truth to his own 
life or to the lives of others. 

In order that we may understand what the 
Golden Rule meant to Jesus we must first take into 

56 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


account His idea of God and His conception of 
human lfe and human relationships: These, as 
we know, were of the highest and most exalted 
character. To His mind whatever added to the 
worth and sacredness of human life; whatever 
helped the individual on his or her way through 
the difficulties and trials of life; whatever glad- 
dened, ennobled, enriched and deepened a human 
soul; whatever brought beauty, harmony and peace 
into human relationships ;—everything that called 
the individual away from the husks of unrighteous- 
ness and the lower satisfactions of the body, mind 
and spirit and made the Kingdom more possible; 
to Jesus, whatever helped to accomplish these wise 
and beneficent results in human lives or in human 
relationships was of great value and everything in 
thought and in custom and in belief and in prac- 
tice that failed to do so was worthless and less than 
worthless, was positive evil. 

We have to acknowledge that the Golden Rule 
taken by itself is somewhat abstract,—‘‘As ye 
would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
to them;’’ it is indefinite and is not a truth having 
one and only one meaning for everybody but easily 
lends itself to a great variety of meanings. It 
means more and contains greater possibilities to 
the one whose valuation of life is high than it does 
to the person whose thought of life moves in the 


57 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


lower realms of expediency and mercenary enter- 
prise. 

It is evident that Jesus did not place much em- 
phasis upon any rules of conduct as such; to him 
the important thing was for an individual to have 
the right spirit, the true motive and the unselfish 
desire. He never made the mistake of confounding 
the ways of the spirit with the formalism of the 
letter; to him obedience to law was simply one of 
the necessary stepping stones to a higher freedom 
of the spirit and a greater spontaneity of living. 
He placed great emphasis upon ‘‘the abundance 
of the heart;’’ ‘‘A good man out of the good 
treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is 
good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of 
his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for 
of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’’ 

To Jesus then, conduct was but an outward ex- 
pression of life which was determined by inward 
conditions, and to Him these inward conditions 
were of superior importance; they were like the 
tree and its fruit and were inseparable one from 
another; ‘‘A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt 
fruit, neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good 
fruit.’’ Jesus was supremely concerned in making 
the tree good; He was forever dealing with the 
causes, the inner sources of life, and so we conclude 
that to him the Golden Rule meant more than a 
mere rule of conduct that could be accommodated to 


58 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden. Rule 


most any standard of living, as might be expressed 
in such a saying as, ‘‘I will do him as he has done 
me, and worse;’’ to the Master of the art of living 
it meant a law of life, a principle having to do 
with the ‘‘abundance of the heart,’’ and always 
called for the highest and best. 

Jesus recognized that some would interpret this 
saying as meaning that one was to do good to those 
from whom good might naturally be expected in 
return and so he said to them at once,—‘‘If ye 
love them that love you, what thanks have ye? 
And if ye do good to them that do good to you, 
what thanks have ye?”’ 

Doing unto others as ye would that they should 
do unto you required something more than this 
mere commerce in human affection; however 
beautiful this was or might become among friends 
it was not enough to ensure the universal happi- 
ness and well being of mankind; one was not to 
do evil unto another who was disposed to do evil 
unto you; one was expected even to return good 
for evil. That is, the feeling of vengeance and the 
spirit of revenge should not be present in our con- 
sciousness, or be allowed to influence our attitude 
toward others or affect our dealings with any of 
our fellowmen. 

In short it means that we are not to lower our 
standards of life and conduct because others do; 
we are to determine never to be debased by permit- 


59 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


ting others to make us hate them; we are not to 
place ourselves on the level of those who would 
demand revenge for every real or imaginary wrong 
others may do us; we are to keep the reciprocity 
of our thoughts, words and conduct on a level with 
the higher valuations of human life and not on a 
level with the lower valuations. 

This is what Jesus must have meant when he 
said to his disciples, ‘‘Love your enemies.’’ This 
was one of his ways of applying the deeper mean- 
ings of the Golden Rule to the lives of men and to 
human relationships. 

Here as elsewhere, we may fail to understand 
the full significance of the thought of Jesus because 
we do not look for the main truth, the central idea 
that he was trying to impress upon the minds and 
hearts of the people; and is it not all too true that 
we often forget his figurative manner of speech 
and so many times spoil the lesson by a too literal 
interpretation of his words? 

We often hear it intimated that it is too much 
and even absurd to ask anyone to turn the other 
cheek; to give the second garment; to go the addi- 
tional mile; or to love an enemy; but what is the 
principle involved? What is the central idea at 
the heart of it all, the one great truth that Jesus 
was trying to teach? 

Is it not the overcoming of evil with good? Is 
it not trying to cure anger and bitterness with 


60 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


gentleness and the strength that comes of self-con- 
trol and self-mastery? Is anger, contention, and 
strife ever overcome simply by adding more anger 
to anger, strife to strife or contention to contention, 
any more than fire is extinguished by adding to 
it more fuel? And more than all this what is the 
effect of ill-will, expressed or unexpressed, upon 
the human heart and upon human lives? 

Is there anything that will so detract from the 
sacredness of human life, or so disfigure the human 
countenance as will hatred? And if it become 
the habit of thought and conduct is there anything 
that has the power to do and will actually do more 
to destroy the gladness of life and the joy of living 
than the feelings of bitterness and resentment and 
anger? 

We wholly misunderstand the thought and belief 
of Jesus in this connection if in these teachings 
we consider that he makes gentleness, patience and 
non-retaliation synonymous with weakness and in- 
efficiency for his most evident thought, expressed 
in all he ever said or did, was that the true strength 
and worth and nobility of an individual should 
be measured by his self-control and not by his un- 
restrained passion. 

This then, in part, is what Jesus meant to teach 
in his handling of the law of life as set forth in 
the Golden Rule—namely—that we are to do more 
than to do good to those who do good to us; we 

61 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


are also to refrain from doing harm to those who 
would do us harm, and even cherish the spirit of 
good-will toward those who have not manifested 
friendship or good-will toward us. A high valua- 
tion of life urges this way of thinking and believ- 
ing and favors this method of action and its justi- 
fication is found in the positive good it accom- 
plishes for man and for mankind. It is a law of 
life; it is both law and prophecy; it is the will of 
God, the ‘‘categorical imperative’’ of the Eternal 
in human hearts. 

‘‘ All things whatsover ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the 
law and the prophets.”’ 

Do not wait to see HOW men are going to treat 
you before you decide HOW you will treat them. 
Decide HOW you desire and long to be treated in 
vour heart of hearts and go about putting your 
desire and longing into your treatment of others. 

If you have been illtreated you have experienced 
at first hand the disagreeable and painful sensations 
of such treatment; therefore, determine that you 
will never be guilty of treating another in a like 
manner and so have the satisfaction of knowing 
that you have not caused in other lives the same 
kind of disagreeable and painful sensations which 
you have had to endure. 

If you want sympathy and friendship do not 
allow the fountain of friendship and sympathy in 

62 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


your heart to become parched and dried because 
you sometimes fail to receive them from others. 

Do not allow your failure to receive them at any 
time to influence your conduct toward any of your 
fellowmen; ‘‘Man’s part is plain—to send love 
forth,—astray, perhaps: No matter, he has done 
his part.’’ Say to yourself,—I will give to others 
what I need, what I desire, what I long to receive 
for myself, and I will keep giving, in season and 
out of season, never doubting but that in so doing 
I follow in the footsteps of the Master of men and 
fulfill the law of life and of love and obey the 
will of God. 

We may say that others are not worthy. No 
matter about that. The only question of impor- 
tanee is, Are you worthy to receive what you now 
know all men owe each other, and have you the 
willingness and courage to square your thought, 
your belief and your conduct to this law of lfe 
which you are now fully convinced ought to actu- 
ate the lives and deeds of all men? In this way 
and in this way supremely you are to build up the 
Kingdom on earth. This is the straight and nar- 
row way that leads to the more abundant life of 
the spirit, for yourself, and in the divine consum- 
mation of the ages for the entire human race. 

Our real danger lies in living too much in small 
circles whose radii do not extend beyond our own 
personal likes and dislikes. In circles whose line 


63 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


of circumference limits our vision and shuts out 
the great world of ideas and ideals; the great 
throbbing world of Humanity. The great test of 
human worth and serviceableness in the Social 
Order is to be able to possess ourselves of another’s 
point of view; not only that we may see ourselves 
as others see us but that we may see and under- 
stand the lives and problems of our fellowmen. 

What is needed in the realms of capital and 
labor today is not so much the organization of one 
party to protect itself against the other party 
as the cultivation of a genuine interest and regard 
in the hearts of all for each other. The laboring 
men need to more fully appreciate the stress and 
strain, the mental effort and anxiety it takes to 
earry on a large business enterprise. The em- 
ployers need to remember that they are dealing 
with human lives and human hearts and not with 
human machines, and that many of the noblest 
children of God are found among those with whom 
they have to deal. 

Aceording to Christ’s interpretation of the 
Golden Rule all must have the right spirit toward 
each other; the spirit of good will must permeate 
human lives and human relationships. It is true 
as a noted writer said that,—‘‘Christ gave to men 
not a code of rules, but a ruling spirit: not truths, 
but a spirit of truth: not views, but a view.’’ In 
all walks of life and under all conditions and eir- 


64 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


cumstances the Golden Rule calls for the highest 
and best in thought, in belief and in conduct. It 
places the highest valuation upon life and makes 
many exacting demands upon the spirit of man. 
It demands the giving up of lower standards of 
living for higher ones. Its face is set against all 
compromise with wrong doing and condemns a 
sordid and mercenary spirit. Hatred it stigmatizes 
as the poison of the soul. Human Brotherhood, 
based upon good will and a respect for the rights 
of all, it declares to be an ideal as necessary as it 
is beneficent to the growing life of humanity. 

Any great principle or truth in order to become 
a mighty power for good in society must be em- 
bodied in individual lives. The principle or truth 
must first make its permanent abode in the inner 
consciousness of men and women. It must become 
‘‘the abundance of the heart’’ and from there, as 
a natural point of departure, go forth among man- 
kind as a divine influence and a holy contagion. 
‘‘Let us live such a life,’’ some one has said, ‘‘that 
if everybody in the world lived the same life the 
world would be complete and perfect.’’ And Em- 
manuel Kant said,—‘‘ Act as though the law by 
which you act should become a universal law of 
Nature.’’ 

All this and more is involved in Christ’s inter- 
pretation of the Golden Rule; it is sound common 
sense, good philosophy and practical religion and 

65 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


is as truly wonderful in its application to the life 
of society as it is to the lives of individuals; how- 
ever, we find ourselves in perfect agreement with 
Christ in affirming that in the final analysis the 
individual is the unit of power and influence in the 
world. It is through the united efforts and in- 
fluence of many individuals that God’s laws are 
to be obeyed; that God’s purposes are to be ful- 
filled, and that God’s Kingdom of truth, righteous- 
ness and love is to come in the lives of men and 
in the affairs of nations. | 

Community life is individual life written large; 
national life is individual hfe written larger; in- 
ternational life is individual life written still 
larger. The same laws apply to international life 
as apply to individual lives. The Golden Rule, 
as interpreted by Christ, holds throughout and 
makes a lke demand upon a Commonwealth of 
Humanity as it does upon the life of an individual. 

The one and supreme lesson we are always to 
keep in mind and seek to embody in our own 
words and deeds and in the lives of men and in 
the affairs of nations is simply this,—how much of 
the spirit of fair play, of good will, of honesty, of 
justice, of sincerity, of love, of Christlike service 
and sacrifice are we willing and anxious to put 
into these relationships that we sustain to each 
other as members one of another and as citizens 
in a Commonwealth that is Divine! 


66 


Christ’s Interpretation of Golden Rule 


Inspired by this deeper interpretation of the 
Golden Rule and stirred by its larger challenge 
shall we not live from day to day more nearly as 
we pray; more nearly as we in the most exalted 
moments of our lives supremely desire to live—yes 
—more nearly as we ought to live as disciples of 
Jesus and as children of His God and our God, 
of His Father and our Father. 


67 


CHRIST’S METHOD OF JUDGING 
INDIVIDUALS 


Why beholdest thou the mote that 1s in 
thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the 
beam that 1s in thine own eye ?—Matt. 7:3. 


THE act of judging is as natural as the act of 
breathing and may be as wholesome and as life 
giving; yet, how many people actually breathe 
properly or judge as they ought? A person can 
no more stop judging and remain an intelligent 
and moral being than he can stop breathing and 
remain a natural physical being. However, as 
there is a right and wrong way to breathe there 
is also a right and wrong way of exercising the 
judgment. 

We are not to suppose that Jesus admonished his 
hearers to refrain entirely from the act of judging 
each other when he said to them,—‘Judge not 
that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye 
judge ye shall be judged;’’ for no one seems to 
have used this faculty so often or so unreservedly 
as did he. It is, we believe, the meaning and the 
manner of judging and the right and wrong way 
of judging and being judged that Jesus cared 

68 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


especially to call attention to and make clear to 
the minds and hearts of his listeners. 

The words of our text and what follows them 
in the same chapter show this to have been his 
unmistakable purpose. ‘‘ Why beholdest thou the 
mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest 
not the beam that is in thine own eye? And how 
wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull the mote 
out of thine eye; and, behold a beam is in thine 
own eye?’’ These words are followed by the ad- 
vice for a man to first remove the beam from his 
own eye before trying to remove the mote from 
the eye of his brother. It would be hard to find 
two more expressive words than ‘‘beam’’ and 
‘‘mote’’; beam standing for something very large 
and mote for something very small. It is clearly 
indicated that the first and most difficult step to 
be taken in this process is that of removing the 
oR KAM:2/ 

While Jesus recognized that a very great deal 
of the judging indulged in was of a thoughtless 
and harmless nature, on the other hand he must 
have keenly felt how useless and often times how 
perverse it might grow to be; especially when in- 
dulged in by persons given to passion, unrighteous 
anger, unsympathetic feelings and uninspired 
ideals, 

It is the hardest possible thing for one to form 
a right and just estimation of his own life and 


69 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


worth, say nothing about another’s; at one moment 
he may think too highly of himself and again, he 
may think too meanly of himself. Verily our 
physical condition too often determines our judg- 
ment of ourselves and of others. Many of the 
harshest and most unjust criticisms we hear are 
traceable to the diseased condition of our nerves. 

Again, man is so apt to judge another in the 
light of his own superior strength, talent, virtue 
and the hike. Thus we may find a physical giant 
looking with contempt upon all physical weakness 
in his brother man. A man with a talent for in- 
vention may undervalue all who have not this gift 
and another may have unusual endowments of 
many kinds and may judge others only as they 
appear to him in the hght of such qualities. Be- 
cause my strength, my talent, or my special capaci- 
ties may be superior to those of others it may and 
often does happen that their positive characteristics 
are superior to my special weaknesses and lack of 
ability ; another’s strength may be my weakness, 
his qualities of mind and accomplishments of life 
my despair. 

To take the beam out of one’s own eye here is 
to be able and willing to view one’s deficiencies 
in the light of another’s virtues and your own 
virtues in the hght of his deficiencies. It is a dif- 
ficult task. It means absolute sincerity with our- 
selves and with others. Yet, I take it that this is 


7O 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


just the ideal placed before us by the Master 
when he demanded that the beam be removed from 
one’s own eye before any attempt be made to re- 
move the mote from another’s eye. ‘‘Make your 
criticism (said Miss Mary E. Wooley) constructive, 
not destructive. It is for you to make the world 
better. And the only possibility is to discover 
Jesus’ way and to do your share in making it the 
way of our common life.’’ 

We are all more or less apt to misunderstand, 
and so are often guilty of misjudging the lives 
of our fellowmen. It is so easy and so satisfying 
to take for granted what we hear about another and 
so hard and disconeerting to take the time and 
pains to find out for ourselves what is true and 
what is untrue and so very difficult to hold our 
judgment in suspense until we do know the truth. 
Judging without reliable evidence is productive 
of much harm and no little suffering in the world, 
and besides it is a most unrighteous and pernicious 
thing to do. Dr. Minot J. Savage was absolutely 
right when he said that,— ‘Suspended judgment, 
waiting for evidence is the last and highest result 
of intellectual culture and educated self-control.’’ 

Jesus declared that a person shall be judged in 
the same way he judges another. If your judg- 
ment is biased and based upon unreliable evidence, 
in return you will be judged after the same fash- 
ion; your very judgment of others is verily a judg- 


vas 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


ment upon yourself; it is as a boomerang aimed 
at another’s heart that returns to wound your own; 
it reveals your true purpose and character to the 
world: It is as a beam, something very large, in 
your eye as compared with the mote, something 
very small, in the eye of the person so judged. 

Are not our judgments of others many times 
only a civilized way, so to speak, of taking revenge 
upon our fellowmen because of some actual or 
supposed injury they may have done us? Instead 
of rushing to the open combat or to the duel as 
formerly we might have done we merely assume 
a more polite role. 

In no way overlooking the fact that there is 
much dishonesty, cruelty and wickedness in the 
lives of men and women that is sad to contemplate, 
the man least worthy of our confidence and affec- 
tion is the one who is forever suspecting his fellow- 
men of dishonesty and infidelity. A person may 
rob, ill-treat, or lie about you, nevertheless, he in 
reality is the one who in the end suffers and is to be 
pitied. Often times it happens that the short- 
comings or perversity of one individual are, as it 
were, foisted upon humanity as a whole; the wrong 
doing and perversities of the individual thus often 
blind us to the goodness and virtue that the large 
majority of our fellowmen actually possess. 

Most of our acquaintances are people of good 
intentions and fine qualities of mind and of heart 


72 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


and may be regarded by us as being truly repre- 
sentative of the world at large; if this were not 
so there would be no stability or safety in our 
public institutions, our homes or in our Social 
Order. | 

It is the view we take of our own lives and the 
lives of those about us and of the great world of 
seen and unseen Realities, in which we live and 
move and have our being; it is this view in all its 
beauty and wonder and divine suggestiveness that 
is the determining factor in our method of judging 
each other and which proclaims to the world 
whether or not we have adopted the Christ Method 
and judge others as we really want others to judge 
us. As our lives deepen our view broadens and 
we grow less and less ready to entertain hasty or 
angry feelings against any of our fellowmen, and 
aS our Own purposes and ideals become more real 
and vital we experience a decided unwillingness to 
judge others in an unjust or in an unsympathetic 
manner. 

We have already spoken of the fact of how diffi- 
cult it is for one to know and judge his own life 
properly and as we study human conditions we 
find the factors almost infinite that seem to debar 
us from obtaining a correct understanding of our 
neighbor’s life and true worth. 

Every man lives an unseen life known not even 
to his most intimate friends. No two persons are 


73 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


just alike; no circumstances, no surroundings just 
the same in which all men are placed and compelled 
to live and work. The birth, education, inheritance, 
inclination and disposition of one differ so widely 
from those of another; and furthermore the likes 
and dislikes are so different that it is almost a 
miracle that men know each other as well as they 
do. 

It is difficult for one who has never felt the 
necessity of laboring for his own support to inter- 
pret the experiences of another who perhaps has 
never been free from this obligation. A person 
may have been the child of wealthy parents, 
brought up in luxury, surrounded and conditioned 
by all that riches are able to do for an individual: 
It is hard for such a one to understand or to judge 
correctly the life of one who never enjoyed similar 
advantages. 

My abstaining from the use of alcoholic drinks 
entitles me to no praise if I never have had any 
desire for them or been so placed as to be over- 
tempted by them. On the other hand, a man 
seemingly born with a weakness that causes him to 
indulge in their use or 1s so circumstanced to make 
it very conducive for him to do so, is decidedly 
entitled to much praise for any attempt he may 
make to overcome the temptation, regardless of the 
many times he may fail to effect his purpose. I 


74 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


may misjudge him because I misunderstand the 
real nature of his struggle. 

This is true in many other instances and many 
souls are holding out under adverse conditions 
that would submerge their critics; often times there 
may be more virtue in one man’s failures than in 
another man’s victories,—then— 


‘* Judge not the workings of a brain 

And of a heart thou canst not see. 

What looks to thy dim eyes a stain, 

In God’s pure light may only be 

A sear, brought from some well-won field, 
Where thou would’st faint and yield.’’ 


Again, where sorrow and sickness and bereave- 
ment have not intruded upon the life of one in- 
dividual and have upon the life of another the 
former will often fail to comprehend the life and 
feelings of the latter. Furthermore, the person 
who attempts but little can hardly be expected to 
enter into the experiences, the anxieties and the 
depressions of the one who attempts much in order 
to enlarge his own life and to serve others. And 
how true it is that a person of a fine and delicate 
and sensitive nature is often misunderstood and 
misjudged simply because we are unable to ap- 
preciate what a deep impression certain sentiments 
and experiences make upon such a personality that 
make little if any impression upon our own lives. 


75 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


This is but a brief portrayal of a few of the 
many conditions and cireumstanees under which 
we are placed and in the presence of which we all 
stand and are to judge and be judged. 

If we only could have listened to Jesus as he 
spoke directly to his disciples and to those about 
him in regard to the matter of judging and being 
judged and could have caught that inexplicable 
and subtle meaning that flashes forth from a great 
and sympathetic nature and could have felt some- 
thing of the glow and inspiration of his words as 
they came forth from his very heart of hearts 
we would be better able to interpret their larger 
and truer meanings,—‘‘Why beholdest thou the 
mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest 
not the beam that is in thine own eye? And how 
wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
mote out of thine eye; and behold a beam is in 
thine own eye? ‘Thou hypocrite, first cast out 
the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou 
see clearly to east out the mote out of thy brother’s 
eye.”’ 

If you judge without sufficient evidence, or are 
hasty, unjust and unsympathetic in your judg- 
ment of others you do but pass sentence upon your- 
self and neither the mote in your brother’s eye nor 
the beam in your own eye are less conspicuous 
than they were before; on the other hand, if you 
are careful as to the evidence, just and sympathetie 

76 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


in your estimation of the shortcomings of others 
and frank and sincere in the presence of your own, 
there will be some possibility and some probability 
that both the mote and the beam may be east out 
together, and the judged and the judging enjoy 
a clearer, a truer and a diviner view of each other’s 
life and personality. 

This is the only wise and sane way in which to 
judge anything or any person. It is the righteous 
and sympathetic Judgment. We think it is the 
correct interpretation of our text and we believe 
it expresses the very spirit in which it must have 
been uttered and in this interpretation we find the 
Christian way of judging and being judged. 

It is a broad and sympathetic interpretation of 
human life that Jesus called for and in which 
we are to find the cure for all judgments that are 
of a small and damaging nature, and which visit 
the poison of their sting upon both parties. 

Human life and human judgment at their best 
are imperfect. Human affairs and human con- 
ditions to say the least are transitory and insecure. 
Today one may be surrounded by all that makes 
life bright, interesting and delightful; tomorrow 
it may all be changed. Today fortune may smile 
upon one; tomorrow it may frown. Human life 
at best is weak and frail needing human sympathy, 
human support, human care and affection. There 
are none so strong that they can live without 


We 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


these aids and supports and none so weak but 
that they may be helped, strengthened and up- 
lifted by them. 

We no longer cling to the old belief in a great 
Day of Judgment for the entire human race. We 
must and do believe in something more real and 
more rational and because more rational and more 
real more awful and sublime. We believe that 
every day is ‘‘Dooms Day’’ and that ‘‘each day 
we set up the type that leaves a printed page,’’ 
and that every word and every deed pronounces 
judgment upon itself and in larger ways than we 
can imagine best owes its own rewards and ad- 
ministers its own punishments. 

Things are so ordered that we are forever passing 
judgment upon ourselves and the office of the 
‘‘Recording Angel’’ is simply to write down this 
judgment for our instruction and admonition in 
the larger ways of the spirit. 

During the great inspired moments of human 
life God has whispered to the human soul of a 
judgment that is more than righteous and more 
than sympathetic: He has whispered of a judg- 
ment fashioned and controlled by the eternal law 
of love. 

No one could judge more severely than did 
Jesus, yet no one has ever been controlled by such 
a profound love for man as was Jesus. Jesus 
desired this divine affection for himself and never 


78 


Christ’s Method of Judging Indiwiduals 


withheld it from another. It is said that he 
looked upon the rich young man and loved him, 
yet what did he require of him! To Simon Peter 
he said,—‘‘Lovest thou Me Simon Peter’’ and 
Peter repled ‘‘Lord Thou knowest that I love 
Thee,’’ yet Jesus spoke to him of betrayal. 

There is no hatred, no bitterness, no malice 
evident in the severest words of condemnation 
Jesus ever uttered. If we think there must have 
been we have failed to comprehend the depth, the 
height and the breadth of his life and personality, 
or have taken for granted words attributed to him 
that are found in many parts of the New Testa- 
ment to which he never could have given expres- 
sion. 

A judgment fashioned and controlled by the 
law of love! This is the emerging idea in our con- 
sideration of Christ’s method of judging indi- 
viduals. He taught that the law of love will bring 
insight and understanding into the method of 
judging. It will open our eyes to the latent possi- 
bilities in human existence. It will call our at- 
tention to the limitations that hinder growth. It 
records with sadness the many desires and ambi- 
tions and aspirations that have been driven out of 
human hearts by ‘‘Man’s inhumanity to man.”’ 
The spirit of love in human hearts views with pity 
the vast amount of unresisted wrong that keeps 
great numbers of men and women and boys and 


79 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


girls in the twilight zone of immaturity and im- 
morality, and forgets not those who entertain high 
and noble aims that are never realized but who 
remain loyal and true to their ideals regardless of 
discouragement or cost or defeat. 

In the seales of Justice may only be weighed 
the cold and bare facts of human conduct and 
achievement, but a judgment fashioned and con- 
trolled by the law of love is not satisfied to stop 
there; it is forever reaching forward into the 
realms of insight and faith and tries to measure 
man in terms of what he sincerely longs to become 
in the innermost recesses of his being. 

The poet Browning in his ‘‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’’ 
has just the right word for us here ;— 


‘For thenee—a paradox 

Which comforts while it mocks,— 
What I aspired to be, 

And was not, comforts me!”’ 

‘All I could never be, 

All, men ignored in me, 

This, I was worth to God.”’ 


Oh, that we might look more than we do for 
the positive good in the world and in human hearts 
and learn to distinguish more carefully between 
eccentricities of being and blemishes of character. 
Oh, that we might bear and forbear, forgive as 
we hope to be forgiven, be perfectly sincere with 

80 


Christ’s Method of Judging Individuals 


ourselves and our friends, and by a holy contagion 
of love and good will make it less possible for evil 
to flourish and more possible for the good to 
triumph ! 

The genuine teachings of Christ can all be uni- 
versally applied to the conduct of man and the 
affairs of the nations and the lesson of our text 
is no exception. In parable, discourse and prayer 
the Master was true to the one and supreme pur- 
pose of his mission; the purpose of establishing 
the Kingdom of righteousness and love in human 
lives and in human relationships. 

In making this purpose ‘‘the way of our common 
life’’ we shall find ourselves being guided to the 
hidden sources of spiritual life and power. Then 
the supreme purpose of his life will be the supreme 
purpose of our lives and we shall be willing and 
anxious to live as he lived, to love as he loved, to 
judge as he judged, serve as he served and wor- 
ship and obey as he obeyed and worshipped. 

We shall then know ourselves to be children of 
the Higher Life if we practise the divine reci- 
procity of love and service; and likewise, our’s 
shall be the undefiled rewards of the spirit; re- 
wards never withheld from the kind, the brave 
and the true. 


‘‘Then give to the world the best you have, 
And the best will come back to you.”’ 


St 


BREAKING THE WORRY HABIT 


Be not anxious for the morrow: for the 
morrow will be anxious for itself. Suf- 
ficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 
—Matt. 6:34. 


WE are to ask ourselves if the worry habit can 
be understood and mastered? Can we find both its 
causes and its cures; or are we bound to the habit 
by the shackles of an inexorable fate? As it is a 
habit more or less common to all and is a habit 
that no one cares to cultivate all are interested 
in having it investigated and analyzed, and if pos- 
sible eliminated from their lives. 

We have a remarkable description of the worry 
habit in the words of our text, taken from the 
revised version of the Bible in which the word 
‘‘anxious’’ is substituted for the word ‘‘thought.’’ 
What is said in the rest of the chapter justifies 
the assertion that Jesus had in mind thoughts 
dominated by nervous anxiety, the over-anxious 
thought and that his attack was upon worldly 
anxiety of all kinds; an anxiety that prevents 
people from possessing the more abundant life 
of the spirit. 

82 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


Some have misunderstood the saying and have 
interpreted Jesus as having declared that no 
thought or consideration of the morrow was natural 
or legitimate. This evidently was not his inten- 
tion. What he was trying to impress upon the 
minds of his lsteners was this;—not that all 
thought of a coming day was wrong, but that any 
thought of the morrow that embarrassed the 
thought or depleted the energies of today was 
wrong and that the difficulties and duties and op- 
portunities of the day should engage the whole life 
and strength and courage of the individual, and 
that those of tomorrow should be met in the same 
way when they arrived. 

It is as if he had said,—Be not anxious for the 
morrow; it will confuse thought and over burden 
life to carry the problems and difficulties and obli- 
gations of two days at the same time; let happen 
what will tomorrow, put your whole heart and 
mind into the work of today, and abandon yourself 
to its tasks and privileges and joys and have no . 
fear but that you will have strength and wisdom 
given you to do the same in the future; this, in 
very truth, is the best way to prepare for the work 
of tomorrow. 

Worry and anxiety were written on the faces 
of those to whom he was speaking, and as one who 
understood what was in man Jesus spoke straight 
to what has always been one of the greatest weak- 


83 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


nesses of mankind and one from which they are 
forever trying to rid themselves. Yes, worry in 
all its forms must ever be regarded as one of the 
chief enemies of human life and happiness; con- 
sequently, freedom from the habit a consummation 
earnestly to be desired and eagerly to be sought. 

It was Rev. George MacDonald who said that,— 
‘‘No man ever sank under the burden of today. 
It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the 
burden of today, that the weight is more than a 
man can bear.’’ ‘‘Why wilt thou be concerned 
beyond today,’’ said Martin Luther, ‘‘and take 
upon thyself the misfortunes of two days;’’ and 
Dr. Edward Everett Hale once said to a friend,— 
‘‘Never bear more than one kind of trouble at the 
same time. Some people bear three kinds; all they 
have had, all they have now and all they ever 
expect to have.’’ 

It is one thing to describe the worry habit, and 
another thing to say how it is to be overcome, 
and still another and a very different thing to 
actually and effectually put into operation the life 
giving forces in our lives and in the lives of others 
that shall eventually emancipate all of us from the 
causes and consequences of the worry habit. 

All are willing to admit that there are causes 
enough for worry; things are not as they ought to 
be; Hamlet was not the only one who could find 
reasons for saying,— 


84 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


‘‘The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, 
That ever I was born to set it mght!’’ 


There are rumors of wrongs and actual wrongs 
in the world; there are great principles of govern- 
ment and social science that are constantly being 
disregarded; there are a multitude of causes in 
both private and public life, in business and pro- 
fessional life that are constant sources of trouble 
and worry and which try the temper and the 
patience of individuals. 

That we may better understand our subject let 
us say at once that there are real causes for worry 
and imaginary ones. And what of the fanciful 
or imaginary ones? 

We cross so many bridges that turn out to be 
phantoms of the imagination; we borrow so much 
trouble that alone is created in the borrowing, for- 
getting what the aged man of ninety said that 
he had had a great many troubles during his long 
life but that most of them never happened. We 
stand within so many shadows caused by our own 
superstitions and earth born fears passing between 
ourselves and the sunlight of the upper skies. 

We are suspicious over much; we suspect our fel- 
low-men of wrong motives, of wrong doing when 
they are perhaps doing much better than we could 
or would do if placed under their circumstances ; 
we lack confidence in ourselves and in our friends; 


85 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


fear and ill-will and distrust and worry rob the 
mind of its needed rest and the body of its needed 
strength. 

We vainly imagine that if we were only some- 
body else or somewhere else, or surrounded by other 
circumstances and friends, amid new scenes and 
new opportunities,—then we might live more 
nearly as we ought to live and at heart, in a half- 
hearted way, desire to live; or we might so live 
had we the ability, the genius and the advantages 
of those who seem to be the more favored sons 
and daughters of the human family. 

From a few of the so-called imaginary causes we 
turn to some of the real ones, and here our list is 
exceedingly long. We have time, however, to give 
but a few examples. 

Ill-health, disappointment, suffering and sorrow 
occupy prominent places on this list. Then there 
are the actual duties and burdens of the day and 
of every day and the unmitigating round of care 
and responsibility,. which at times seems almost 
like a dark Nemesis hovering about and above 
individual lives ready to rejoice at human weakness 
and to glory at human discouragement. 

There are those who have wealth and are bur- 
dened by the publicity and notoriety that it brings 
with it, and may be in a constant state of unrest 
lest some turn of fortune leave them penniless. 
There are others who are neither rich nor poor 

86 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


who have not the nobility of soul to accept the 
stern logic of their position but are forever living 
behind a vapor cloud of conventional cant, the 
very transparency of which does but reveal lives 
of worry and abject servitude. 

And then there are the great majority of men 
who live on what they earn from day to day; 
whose occupations, to say the least, are not per- 
manent, economic conditions are not all that they 
ought and might be, food, shelter and clothing 
must be provided for the family, bills must be paid 
and some attempt must be made to gratify the 
higher incentives and needs of mind and spirit. 

It is not at all strange, owing to the difficulty of 
providing the actual necessities of life, to say noth- 
ing about anything else, that men should often 
regard the tasks of life as hard and burdensome, 
and as such they inevitably become sources of 
anxiety and worry. Thus, worry may be the 
result of imaginary wrong or imaginary good that 
may or may not happen to the individual; it be- 
comes a real worry when it grows out of actual 
problems, hardships and sorrows. 

One person may worry over the approaching 
end of the world; another may worry over the 
dawning light of the next day that shall find him 
unable to bear its burdens and fulfill its obliga- 
tions. We choose to call the former an imaginary 
worry and the latter a real one: Allowing this 


87 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


to be true, it is nevertheless a fact that both in- 
dividuals may experience the same degree of suf- 
fering: Is this not the paradox of worry? 

When we come to speak of the remedies for 
worry we need first of all to fully persuade our- 
selves that worry for any cause whatever is un- 
necessary and unreasonable, and that in over- 
coming the worry habit we do but assert the true 
qualities of free and rational and superior beings. 

This is all the more evident to us when we come 
to see that worry adds nothing to human life and 
power and welfare but is a constant drain upon its 
vital energies. It is also the germ of many petty 
vices and weaknesses common among mankind,— 
such as envy, jealousy, suspicion, fear, revenge, 
prejudice, impatience, anger and even hatred. 
Worry is to human life somewhat as frost is to 
vegetable life, or as cold benumbs the body so 
worry benumbs conscious life and effort. Worry 
interferes with the natural and normal functions 
of the body; men have died from nothing but over 
worry and from fear: Shakespeare’s expression, 
—‘‘Hreeze thy young blood’’ was more than a 
poetic faney. 

Worry is the rust of life that eats into its beauty 
and charm; it is as a cancer that destroys life and 
ambition; it 1s aS a poisonous disease devitalizing 
and undermining the best part of human life, its 
naturalness, its joyousness, its glad expectations 


88 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


and its immediate participation in what is good and 
true and beautiful; it is constantly taking from 
life and never adding anything to life: It is a 
parasite growth; it is an enemy of the soul. 

Ah! But some one may say, I can easily see 
why I should give up the imaginary worries and 
anxieties, and I wholly agree with you in what 
you say about the effects of any kind of worry 
upon human life, and I believe it to be all un- 
necessary and unreasonable,—but after all is said 
the real worries are too real; if others only knew 
how real they really were they would hesitate a 
long time before telling me to overcome them or 
become their master. No one’s difficulties are quite 
so hard; no one’s problems are quite so exacting ; 
no one’s circumstances quite so trying; no one’s 
burdens are quite so heavy as are mine. 

This is indeed an honest confession and awakens 
a response in many a heart; in fact the most strik- 
ing thing about it is this,—it is Just what every- 
body, no not everybody, but most everybody thinks 
and believes to be true of his or her own individual 
life. Is there not something wrong about this con- 
fession? Is it not right here and now that the 
first move in breaking the worry habit can be 
made? Can we not, by an act of thought and will 
and by a prayer of the spirit extricate ourselves 
from this vast majority of deluded mortals? 

‘“An ancient fable tells the story that once, 

89 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


many years ago, all men and women were per- 
mitted to throw off their burdens in a heap, and 
then to choose from the pile any other that they 
preferred. It was only a little while before they 
all returned and begged to carry their own old 
trouble once more. The fable concludes by saying 
that, each heart knows its own bitterness; but who 
knows that his own grief is bitterer than that of 
his neighbor.’’ The truth embodied in this ancient 
fable if never lost sight of would greatly reduce 
the proportions of our troubles and at the same 
time broaden and deepen our sympathies for our 
fellowmen; it would also enable us to bear our 
own cares and responsibilities and sorrows with 
less fret and worry and help others to do the same. 
It is when the yoke is easy that the burden is light. 

Another and an important step in this reforma- 
tion is taken when we learn to dwell less upon 
the abstract phases of life and thought and give 
our undivided attention to the practical and con- 
erete. Both philosophy and theology have seemed 
dull and uninteresting to men because they have 
in large measure missed the point of contact with 
real human life,—with human life as it is and not 
as someone thinks it is or ought to be. 

The writers of Ideal Republics and Utopias and 
the dreamers of socialistic schemes sometimes for- 
vet that it is not the system that makes the citizen 
so. much as it is the citizen that makes the system, 


go 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


and that a Republic becomes ideal and remains 
so only because there are ideal men who manage 
its affairs and shape its destiny. Reformers and 
those who are working for the public good often 
fail to find the point of contact,—wanting to ac- 
complish everything at once they accomplish noth- 
ing practical and frequently end in utter dis- 
couragement. 

Worry and confusion are many times the result 
of not. finding where to begin upon the problems 
of life, upon its duties and obligations. 

A person may be passing along a thoroughfare 
in one of our large cities. The sidewalk may be 
erowded with people going and coming, this way 
and that. It is all somewhat confusing and be- 
wildering to him until he bethinks himself that 
each one of the vast crowd about him is an in- 
dividual like himself, going about his business, 
having similar desires and hopes and living in 
much the same way as he lives, and at the close of 
day finding his home and his friends the same as 
he expects to do. Viewed in this way there is 
no longer bewilderment, confusion or worry in his 
mind and it all becomes a beautiful panorama of 
practical himan life. 

There are many who look out upon the great 
questions of modern civilization, the great antic- 
ipations of the human heart and the great mys- 
teries of the Unseen in much the same way as a 


gli 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


man looks out upon the crowded street, and some 
find the point of contact and others do not. 

Here is a terrible condition existing among the 
prisons of a country. A Miss Dorothea L. Dix 
sees where to begin and low confusion and worry 
give place to well directed effort. 

Here is the dark and discouraging tenement 
problem of a great city. While many people won- 
der and talk and become bewildered about it a 
Jacob Riis studies the actual conditions and soon 
publishes to the world his story of ‘‘How the 
Other Half Lives’’ and the tenement problem is 
no longer a matter for conjecture but has become 
a conerete and practical reform movement. 

Many people indulge in vain anxiety and worry 
over the negro problem; meanwhile Hampton and 
Tuskeegee quietly send out hundreds of individuals 
in whose lives the problem has already been solved, 
and through whom hundreds of others will be 
reached and transformed into intelligent and loyal 
citizens of the country. 

Here are the serious problems of Capital and 
Labor. While wild-eyed agitators are stirring up 
enmity and ill-will among the people far-sighted 
and courageous employers are sharing their con- 
fidence and management and business with their 
employees and the solution of these problems is 
only a matter of time. 

It is much the same way in whatever we think 


Q2 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


or do. When we have found the point of contact ; 
whenever we feel that we are doing just the right 
thing in just the right way and at just the right 
time, then anxiety and worry are out of the 
question and we become confident that tomorrow, 
with its duties and events and experiences will 
take care of itself. 

And this point of contact comes to everyone in 
the form of his or her Nearest Duty,—and duty 
comes unattended and alone. When one duty is 
accomplished another is born in the process. One 
by one they come. To theorize about them may 
not be wrong, but to neglect them will confuse 
life and cause only trouble; furthermore, the 
larger and nobler ends of life will be defeated by 
so doing. A person desiring to become a mathe- 
matician will never be able to comprehend a prob- 
lem of Euclid if he neglects the lessons that are 
given him to do from day to day. 

It is not unlike this in all the affairs of our 
daily living. The larger thought, the larger ex- 
perience, the serenity of mind, the repose of spirit, 
the discipline of will and emotions, and the broad 
horizon’s grander view are not acquired by those 
who neglect the simple and practical and concrete 
duty, however meaningless or menial it may, at the 
time, seem to be. 

How these neglected duties have the power to 


93 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


rise up and witness against us, and at the same 
time with a kind of stern patience wait for us 
to acknowledge their presence and importance by 
no longer remaining indifferent to their wise and 
beneficent demands. 


‘“One by one thy duties wait thee; 

Let thy whole strength go to each, 

Let no future dream elate thee, 

Learn thou first what these may teach.’’ 


Shall we then not find the inner meaning of these 
words of Jesus,—‘‘Be not anxious for the morrow: 
for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof ;’’ sufficient unto 
the day is the task thereof and sufficient unto the 
task shall be our strength: Shall we not discover 
in these words and in their application to our 
lives one of the timeless messages of the Christian 
Faith? And because the Worry Habit works havoe 
in our bodies and thoughts and emotions and con- 
duct and character shall we not, in all possible 
ways, determine to emancipate ourselves from the 
Habit and free ourselves from its strangle hold 
upon our lives? 

In order to do this we must have vision, faith 
and courage; we must ‘‘See all, trust God, nor be 
afraid,’’ we must learn how to cultivate the fruits 
of the spirit and in the spirit of the Master quietly 
and bravely and hopefully go onward and upward 


94 


Breaking the Worry Habit 


day by day in the royal pathway of life and truth 
and duty and love and of service. 

When we are able to do this we shall become 
free and rational, obedient and loving children 
of Him who is able and willing to do for us ex- 
ceeding abundantly above all we can think or 
ask or imagine. 


Hour by Hour. 


God broke our years to hours and days, that 
Hour by hour 
And day by day, 

Just going on a little way, 

We might be able all along 

To keep quite strong. 

Should all the weight of life 

Be laid across our shoulders, and the 
future, rife 

With woe and struggle, meet us face to face 
At just one place, 
We could not go; 

Our feet would stop; and so 

God lays a little on us every day. 

And never, I believe, on all the way, 

Will burdens bear so deep 

Or pathways he so steep, 

But we can go, if by God’s power, 

We only bear the burden Hour by Hour. 

George Klingle. 
95 


SIGNIFICANCE OF SELF-LOVE 


Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
—Mark 12:31. 


Ir there is to be any real progress in human 
lives or in the Social Order suspicion, envy, ill-will 
and hatred must be overcome by the permeating 
and expulsive power of a wise and intelligent love. 
The highest possible value is given to the virtue 
of love in the timeless messages of the Christian 
Faith. 

To the mind of Jesus there was nothing weak or 
sentimental about the virtue of love. To him true 
love was only possible to the strongest, the best 
and the bravest. It was the great binding force 
between human lives and the connecting link be- 
tween God and man. To him there were no greater 
commandments made known to mankind than the 
two great commandments of love to God and love 
to man; and the second was equal to the first. 

A disciple, interpreting this second command- 
ment to others, said,—‘‘If a man say, I love God, 
and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that 
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how 
ean he love God whom he hath not seen? And 

96 


Significance of Self-Love 


this commandment have we from Him, That he who 
loveth God love his brother also.’’ 

St. Paul, more than others, caught the inspira- 
tion of Christ’s teachings on this subject and 
poured forth his very soul in a great Symphony 
of Love, in his first letter to the Corinthians, that 
is one of the best appreciations of the true nature 
of the Gospel of Christ that has ever been given 
to the world. Among the many sayings of the 
Apostle on the subject of love we find these that,— 
‘‘Love worketh no ill to one’s neighbor, therefore 
love is the fulfilment of the law;’’ and again 
that,—‘‘ Perfect love casteth out fear.’’ 

Love is indeed something divine. It redeems 
from decay the finer traits of manhood and woman- 
hood. It is the crowning feature of personality 
and that quality of character to which all other 
qualities are but contributary. It is the most 
constant, the most positive, the most lasting and 
the most universal virtue in all the affairs of 
human life. 

In our thought of this divine affection there 
comes crowding in upon our minds the patriot’s 
love for his country; the citizen’s love for his 
town; the martyr’s love for his cause; the young 
man’s love for his ealling; the parents’ love for 
their children and the love of children for their 
parents; the love of husband and wife for each 
other; the love for that which is ideal, good, true 


97 


Significance of Self-Love 


and beautiful; and the love man has for himself, 
his neighbor and his God. 

We are not, at this time, concerned so much 
with the many channels through which the stream 
of love seems to pour its abundant waters as we 
are with the stream itself and especially with 
our part in providing such channels that,—‘‘The 
very founts of love’’ may never for us ‘‘be parched 
and dried.’’ 

‘‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’’ This 
ealls for love for others and love for self in the 
same breath; it implies that self-love should be the 
measure of one’s love for others; or that,—the 
amount of love for others and the amount of love 
for self should balance each other. 

This places the emphasis upon a truth too often 
overlooked or ignored altogether. It plainly states 
that the individual life is the determining factor 
in the general welfare and happiness of Mankind; 
it implies that unless love for self is strong and 
deep and lasting, love for others cannot be so, and 
that the truer and better the love for self, the 
wiser and nobler will be the love for others. 

The late Charles Dudley Warner very well said 
that,—‘‘Each person’s base of operations is the 
field of his immediate duty. Neglect this field and 
all you undertake at a distance is compromised. 
First, then be of your own country, your own 
town, your own home, your own church, your own 


98 


Sigmficance of Self-Love 


workshop, then, if you can, set out from this to 
go beyond it. This is the plain and natural order.’’ 

What do we mean by self-love and why is it 
necessary and how is it to be cultivated? In the 
first place I think we need to carefully distinguish 
between self-love and selfishness as they are all 
too apt to be confounded. 

It is not selfish for one to desire to live, to 
possess physical health and to be strong in body 
and mind, or to covet the best gifts and blessings 
that life has to bestow. It is not selfish to desire 
the approval and praise of our fellowmen, to ac- 
quire wealth, to seek to enlarge one’s life through 
added experience, through social intercourse and 
social pleasure, through reading, study, investiga- 
tion, travel and adventure. 

It is not selfish for the professional man to 
wish to be among the first in his ealling, or for the 
business man, the carpenter, the clerk and the 
laboring man to seek to be classed with the more 
efficient among those who work with them in these 
various occupations. 

The world has never suffered from over ambition 
and never can suffer from such a cause; the real 
danger lies in the lack of any ambition whatever 
or in a misdirected ambition. 

Self-love demands that you become all that it is 
possible for you to become; that whatever. talent 
or capacity you possess you enlarge and: magnify 


99 


Significance of Self-Love 


with all the determination, courage and persever- 
ence of your being. It is just this personal factor 
of self-love, this dynamic of the individual soul, 
that adds so much charm and beauty to human 
existence and helps to make life more worth living. 

Selfishness creeps in when self-love fails to take 
cognizance of the fact that there are as many 
self-lovers as there are individuals in the world 
and that these individuals have the same needs 
and the same rights and are entitled to the same 
high regard and treatment from others as others 
expect from them; selfishness asserts itself when 
self-love is willing to secure its own advantages at 
the expense of others or in ways that are at once 
unkind, unjust and dishonest. 

Nearly all the problems of suffering and hard- 
ship in individual lives and in the Social Order 
are the bitter fruits of selfishness; selfishness is the 
cardinal sin of Humanity. 

Take one example: It is perfectly right for the 
operators of mines to make all the profit they can 
from their business, with a due regard for the 
interests of the public and the rights of the miners. 
It is selfish, however, if in doing this their profit 
includes what legitimately belongs not only to the 
public but also to the workers as their contribution 
to the success of the enterprise. 

Again, all are willing to concede that labor has 
a perfect right to organize for its mutual well- 

100 


Significance of Self-Love 


being and to procure its just proportion of the 
profit resulting from the sale of the coal, or any 
other product of industry; it is, however, selfish 
and wrong for organized labor to attempt to in- 
timidate or ill-treat any single individual, who for 
any reason whatever prefers to remain outside of 
their organization. 

It is for the individual to carefully discriminate 
between self-love and selfishness in his contact 
with his fellowmen in all the affairs of every day 
living. 

If there is danger of self-love becoming too much 
in evidence there is also danger that in the absence 
of a proper regard for self, love for others may 
become broad and _ shallow. 

The giver of good advice may be the greatest 
in need of it and the last to accept it. The would- 
be reformer of the world may be unable to live 
peaceably with his own family or with his neigh- 
bor and may often jeopardize his cause by the 
inconsistency of his own personal life. 

There is a kind of love that goes out to mankind 
that is weak and flabby and is without back-bone. 
Our sympathy for the sufferer may be of such a 
nature as to render us unable to alleviate his suf- 
fering. The physician, if he allow his sympathy 
for his patient to get the better of his judgment, 
may be so unnerved that he may be powerless to 

IOT 


Significance of Self-Love 


act for the real good of the one who comes to him 
for help. 

Charity is often productive of the very condi- 
tions it seeks to alleviate; this is largely owing 
to misdirected sympathy; this, however, is grad- 
ually being remedied by an intelligent study of 
needy cases and through better organization and 
equipment. 

A parent may do a child more harm than good 
by the kind of sympathy she allows to determine 
her treatment of the little one. It is said that, 
girls who are training to become nurses at the 
beginning of their career are easily overcome in 
the presence of suffering and that those in author- 
ity find it necessary to remind them to prepare 
themselves to do their duty by taking proper 
nourishment and sufficient rest, which, through 
nervous fear and dread they often neglect to do. 

Self-love then has to do as Mr. Warner said 
with one’s ‘‘base of operations;’’ it has to do with 
the point of departure from which we set out to 
accomplish anything for our own larger good or 
for the larger good of our fellowmen. Publie and 
private serviceableness depend upon the quality 
of this self-love; it is only as the sacredness of 
human lives and human relationships make the 
same appeal to us as they did to Jesus that self- 
love is revealed to us in all the beauty and sig- 
nificance of its divine reality; we are capable of 

102 


Significance of Self-Love 


helping others in the best possible ways only as 
self-love is inspired by the Christ spirit of love to 
God and man and the Christ ideal of service. 

Having said what self-love is and distinguished 
it from selfishness and having seen why it is neces- 
sary, and that its absence from personality makes 
for weakness, inability and inefficiency, it now re- 
mains for us to consider the means of its ecultiva- 
tion; and at the beginning of such a consideration 
we would place the words,—Know Thyself. Self- 
love must be founded on self-knowledge. 

The history of the human race is no more and no 
less than the record of the unfolding and develop- 
ing life of the human spirit, mind and heart; up, 
up, up it has come from barbarism with its eye 
for an eye and its tooth for a tooth, with its blood 
revenge, its duelling and its modern warfare until 
mankind has reached the elevation where a per- 
manent international Congress has become a reality. 

Today as individuals and as a race we only 
stand on the threshold of the largest fulfilment 
of private and public life the world has ever 
known. We choose to think this and work for 
this because we believe that in spite of wrongs 
and rumors of wrongs and the maladjustments 
of our present day society, in spite of selfishness, 
immorality and crime there is in the world today 
more justice than ever before, more kindness, more 
goodness and more love. The average individual 

103 


Significance of Self-Love 


has come to a truer knowledge of himself and pas- 
sionately reaches out for the larger and better 
life of understanding and appreciation. It is noth- 
ing less than awe inspiring to see the hunger and 
thirst of human souls for the beautiful, the good 
and the true; it is nothing short of a tragedy to 
see a human being, young or old, seeking for these 
things in places and through experiences where 
they are not to be found. 

Self-knowledge reveals to the individual his own 
weakness and lack of wisdom and shows him the 
way to power and insight. It paints the ill effects 
of envy, selfishness, and hatred upon the human 
heart and warns the individual to indulge in them 
is to drop back into the lower realm of existence. 
Self-knowledge teaches the need of self-control, 
self-poise and of self-mastery. 

In addition to this self-knowledge, and far more 
important to the cultivation of the highest type of 
self-love, there is the need of the great ideals of 
life, the ideals that have forever gone before man- 
kind as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by 
night, and supremely a constant and loyal devotion 
to them. For one transcendent moment we are 
what we love, what we reverence, what we worship, 
what in our heart of hearts we long to become. 

In order that the feelings, the experiences and 
the intimations of these transcendent moments 
may find practical expressions in our daily lives 

104 


Significance of Self-Love 


and be a constant source of help and inspiration 
to us we must be ever active to realize our ideals 
in conduct and in character. The same as there is 
physical, mental and moral activity there is spirit- 
ual activity and it is spiritual activity that helps 
us to ‘‘See life steadily and to see life whole’’ and 
to measure the human in terms of the Divine. 

Love is the spiritual dynamic of the soul; out of 
the soul, out of the heart of man are the issues 
of life. Love is ‘‘The Greatest Thing’’ in all the 
world and the crowning virtue of personality. It 
is a strong, intelligent and enduring quality. It 
is limitless and its finite reachings extend into the 
realms of faith and hope and transfigure them 
with the light of a love that is infinite and eternal 
of which our own is but a fragmentary and incom- 
plete expression. 

The child sees the love of God in the face of its 
mother; the growing youth sees this love in the 
family life; the young man may perchance ex- 
perience this love in his devotion to the dreams 
and visions of an advancing manhood; and before 
the eyes of all this love shines forth from the lives 
of those who have overcome the world by its all 
conquering power. 

There is no task too difficult for love, no duty too 
irksome, no obedience too exacting, if behind it all 
we feel that it is the Infinite Love calling us on- 

105 


Significance of Self-Love 


ward and upward into the fellowship of the good 
and the great of all ages. 

As a child believes in its mother; as the patriot 
unhesitatingly believes in his country and never 
falters in the presence of his duty; and as Jesus 
believed in God and taught his disciples to have 
faith in His eternal goodness, so we, enriched and 
inspired by all these ideals of the spirit hfe ought 
to love and worship God with all the heart, mind, 
soul and strength we possess, and our neighbors 
as ourselves. 

In this knowledge of self and in this love of the 
highest; in the beauty and reality and suggestive- 
ness of it all can we not find the secret of the true 
self-love? And animated and uplifted and sus- 
tained thereby can we not go forth to life with a 
glad heart and a high resolve to dare and to do 
whatever is given us to do or to bear? Whatever 
comes to us in the form of duty, of service, of op- 
portunity, of suffering or of sacrifice ? 

Loving ourselves the more that our love for 
others may be stronger, wiser and better; loving 
God supremely that both our love for self and 
our love for others may be truer, deeper and 
diviner. 

And in these ways help to establish God’s King- 
dom of Love and of Righteousness in our own 
hearts and lives and finally in the lives and hearts 
of all mankind. 

106 


Significance of Self-Love 


‘“‘There lies in the centre of each man’s heart 
A longing and love for the good and pure, 

And if but an atom, or a larger part, 

I tell you this shall endure, endure, 

After the body has gone to decay— 

Yea, after the world has passed away. 


‘The longer I live and the more I see 

Of the struggle of souls toward heights above, 
The stronger this truth comes home to me, 
That the universe rests on the shoulders of love. 
A Love so limitless, deep and broad 

That men have renamed it and ealled it God. 


‘‘And nothing that ever was born or evolved, 
Nothing created by light or force, 

But deep in its system there les dissolved 

A shining drop from the great Love Source— 

A shining drop that shall live for aye, 

Though kingdoms may perish and stars may die.’’ 


107 


CONSIDER MAN! HOW 
HE GROWS! 


Consider the lilies of the field, how they 
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; 
And yet I say unto you that even Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these.—Matt. 6:28, 29. 


THESE words of Jesus are found in what has been 
called the ‘‘Sermon on the Mount’’ and they are 
in keeping with His favorite manner of teaching. 
He was constantly speaking in parables, in a figura- 
tive way, by comparisons and by analogies. 

A little faith, even as small as a grain of mustard 
seed, he said would like the seed grow to large 
proportions. The influence of the truth would per- 
meate the world like the leaven that leaveneth the 
entire measure of meal. The growth of the King- 
dom would be like that of a kernel of corn in the 
ground; ‘‘first the blade, then the ear, after that 
the full corn in the ear.’’ 

When there was a discussion as to who would 
be the greatest in the Kingdom, Jesus, by way 
of suggestion, took a little child and placed it in 
the midst of his disciples and said that the child- 

108 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


like and teachable and lovable spirits would be the 
greatest in the Kingdom. 

In all he said Jesus sought to explain what he 
meant by the presence of God in Nature and in 
human lives. Everything in Nature, in the occupa- 
tions of his people, in the transcendent beauty of 
faithful souls and in the lives of men and women 
and little children that would help to make his 
meaning clear he used either as analogies or as 
direct evidences and revelations of the life and 
character and purpose and power and wisdom and 
goodness of God. And this was all the direct 
result of his believing the world to be God’s world 
and that man was a partaker of the divine life and 
that the thought and affection of God included 
and were solicitous of the well being and happiness 
of all individuals; to Jesus, God had written these 
timeless messages of the spirit in His ‘‘ Blue Print’’ 
of the origin and destiny of man. 

How close the spiritual kinship between Jesus 
and the prophet Isaiah. It was no mere coinci- 
dence that Jesus began His public ministry by 
reading from the writings of that prophet. It is 
perfectly natural that there should be such a re- 
markable resemblance between their methods of 
teaching. What Jesus said about the ‘‘lilies’’ and 
what Isaiah said about the ‘‘thorn and the brier’’ 
is the deepest and boldest figurative language that 
ean be found in all literature. Many of the words 


109 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


of Jesus may well have been the words of Isaiah, 
and vice versa. With our text in mind read,— 
‘‘Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, 
and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle 
tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for 
an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.’’ 

The lilies to which Jesus referred were noted 
for their remarkable beauty and probably were the 
purple-tinged white lilies which are still to be 
found growing in Palestine. They grew wild and 
in large quantities in the Holy Land. They were 
often found among and towering above the wheat 
and corn and presented a most striking appearance, 
in contrast with the more sober colors which sur- 
rounded them. The stems of the lihes were of a 
reedy substance and when dried were used, with 
other materials, for fuel to heat the ovens. In a 
green state the stems made excellent feed for the 
cattle. 

All these things were matters of common knowl- 
edge and experience in the lives of those to whom 
Jesus was speaking and they help us to understand 
how appropriate were his references to the lilies 
of the field when he said, ‘‘Consider the lilies of 
the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do 
they spin; And yet I say unto you, That even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these.’’ 

There are two ways of interpreting the life of 

110 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


a flower; one is the way of the scientist—the ana- 
lytic and the other is the way of the poet and 
prophet, the synthetic; it may either suggest 
‘‘thoughts too deep for tears’’ or it may suggest 
ideas too light for articulation. These two ways 
are, or ought to be mutually inclusive and are in 
fact often found side by side in the life of certain 
individuals. Nearly everything in human life and 
experience can be approached in these two ways. 

A scientist may analyze the human body and 
write out the story of its anatomy. He may probe 
the human mind for its motives and secrets and 
print a book on psychology. He may even venture 
among the religious convictions of the spirit and 
publish many volumes on systematic theology. 
But, if he lack the prophetic element in himself 
his own life will not only become narrow but his 
interpretation of what he sees and examines and 
publishes will fail to be illuminating and con- 
vineing to his readers. 

The Rev. George MacDonald made this distinc- 
tion clear when he said,—‘‘ Ask the man of mere 
science, what is the truth of a flower; he will 
pull it to pieces, show you its parts, explain how 
they operate, how they minister each to the life 

of the flower; he will tell you what changes are 

| wrought in it by scientific cultivation; where it 

lives originally, where it can live; the effects upon 

it of another climate; what part the insects bear 
Hid 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


in its varieties and doubtless many more facts 
about it. 

‘‘Ask the poet what is the truth of the flower, 
and he will answer; ‘Why, the flower itself, the 
perfect flower, and what it cannot help saying to 
him who has ears to hear it.’ The truth of the 
flower is, not the-facts about it, be they correct as 
ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, glad- 
dening, patient thing throned on its stalk—the 
compeller of smile and tear from child and from 
prophet. The man of science laughs at this be- 
cause he is only a man of science, and does not 
know what it means; but the poet and the prophet 
and the child know and they are not disturbed 
by his laughter.’’ 

Yes, we would have the botany of the flower but 
not forget that it hides a secret too deep for tears. 
We would have the psychology of the mind but we 
would also have the living, throbbing and loving 
individual. We would have a systematic theology 
but we would have, above all, the actual embodi- 
ment of faith, hope and love in human lives. 

It is evident to us how Jesus would have an- 
swered the question,—‘‘ What is the truth of the 
flower?’’ What therefore, is his answer, or better 
what is the lesson he drew from the ‘‘Lilies of the 
field ?’’ 

The lesson is found in the words ‘‘Consider 
HOW they grow.’’ But what of the words ‘‘They 

The 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


toil not neither do they spin?’’ To many this 
may seen to contradict the common every day ex- 
periences of life and what we have considered to 
be the truth about growth. 

We are accustomed to say that we grow by 
toiling and spinning and striving and overcoming. 
We say first the difficulty, then the work, the 
struggle, after that the growth, the progress, the 
victory. Does Jesus bring confusion into this 
order? Does he say that it is all wrong? By no 
means. If necessary we could easily prove from 
his own life and teachings that he considered 
work not only supremely important but also that 
he regarded it as being something divine; ‘‘My 
Father worketh hitherto and I work.’’ 

We begin to understand his meaning when we 
remember that the word toil has a different history 
and another significance than the word work. 
While they are now, they were not formerly synon- 
ymous terms. Toil meant labor that was especially 
fatiguing, oppressive, harassing; it meant entangle, 
trouble, disturbance, turmoil and the like. 

We can easily see from this that Jesus might 
have meant that there were certain kinds of toil 
and work and activity that did not produce any 
growth and might even become a hindrance to 
growth, and this was to our way of thinking just 
what he did mean. Did not the poet Wordsworth 
state well this truth when he wrote that,— 


113 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


‘<The eye it cannot choose but see, 
We eannot bid the ear be still; 
Our bodies feel where’er they be 
Against or with our will. 


‘‘Nor less I deem that there are powers 
Which of.themselves our minds impress, 
That we ean feed this mind of ours 

In a wise passiveness. 


‘‘Think you ’mid all this mighty sum 
Of things forever speaking, 

That nothing of itself will come; 
But we must still be seeking?’’ 


Jesus was trying to convince the Scribes and 
Pharisees that their elaborate sacrifices at the altar ; 
that their petty and exacting rules of personal 
eonduct; that their long and tiresome forms of 
worship and that their slavish and thoughtless 
adherence to the mere letter of the law, were re- 
tarding their religious growth and were doing more 
harm than good. It was the letter without the 
spirit; the form without the life; it was all un- 
natural and artificial and was without spiritual 
value. 

‘* Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”’ 
There is nothing unnatural or artificial about their 
unfolding and developing process. If that which 


II4 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


is artificial and unnatural is removed from your 
lives, God, who causes the lilies to grow as they 
do, will also cause you to grow in a lke manner. 
The lies grow because they conform unconsciously 
to the laws of growth, which are the expressions 
of God’s will in the flower; man is to grow through 
conscious obedience to the laws of his being and 
through the operations of unconscious sensations 
within him, which are the expressions of God’s 
will in the man. 

Growth is indeed something divine and the 
divine is the most natural and the least artificial 
of all things. The process of growth goes on so 
quietly and is affected by so many conditions that 
we seldom understand its place and importance in 
our lives. 

All unaware to ourselves our lives are being 
silently and secretly moulded and fashioned into 
the image and likeness of what we see and hear 
and by the forces and influences that surround and 
envelop our lives. For example: Society 1s made 
up largely of the influences that go forth from the 
lives of citizens and these influences affect all per- 
sons for better or for worse, as they are good or 
bad. As members of the Social Order we are all 
personally responsible for the kind of influences 
that go forth from our lives, but on the other hand 
we are all unconsciously the fortunate or unfor- 

LES 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


tunate recipients, as the case may be, of the in- 
fluences that predominate in the community. 

Is it not true that we grow most when we are 
least conscious of the process? Can we not believe 
that we grow even more in our hours of sleep 
than we do in the hours of work and intense activ- 
ity? Quietness, rest and repose are as necessary 
to the process of growth as doing and striving and 
struggling. Sleep has well been called nature’s 
great restorer; when it is natural and restful it 
restores the body and its powers to their normal 
conditions. It is even supposed that a person is 
slightly taller in the morning than he is at night. 

We know that the mind of a person may be 
active when he is asleep; dreams and various kinds 
of mental activities testify to this fact. It is when 
this process is interrupted that we are made aware 
of its presence and reality. We hardly know that 
we have a body until its natural laws of growth 
fail to perform their kindly services for us. 

Give nature a chance, is the advice of the wise 
physician of our day; wholesome food, an abun- 
dance of fresh air and pure water, the right amount 
of rest and quiet and going about one’s work in a 
cheerful spirit. Nature is patient, long suffering 
and kind, but she always has the last word to say 
about unnatural and artificial ways of living and 
thinking. 

Jesus was not speaking of physical or of mental 

116 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


growth. He was saying that growth in goodness 
and spiritual power was a natural and a divine 
process, and that the truer and deeper life of the 
spirit was to be unfolded and developed from with- 
in. And the manner of its unfolding was as natural 
as that of the hhes of the field. 

How pleasing it is to see the naturalness of chil- 
dren. How quietly and rapidly their lives seem to 
unfold so long as this naturalness lasts. And 
when they become self-conscious, as we say, we 
instinetively feel that something has been lost out 
of their lives. It must have been this naturalness 
of children that Jesus loved so much and from 
which he drew so many lessons, similar to the one 
he drew from the lilies of the field. 

He believed it to be not only the glory of child- 
hood but the glory of men and women, as well, to 
remain natural, childlike, teachable, lovable, be- 
lieving and obedient throughout life. He taught 
that it was the duty and privilege of men and 
women who had lost this naturalness, by wrong 
and artificial ways of thinking and living, to seek 
to regain what they had lost; for of such is the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

Thus we have set forth in what Jesus said about 
the lilies of the field the divine principle of growth 
found at the centre of the flower and in the heart 
of man. The comparison was made for the purpose 
of ealling attention to the inward conditions of 


117 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


man’s growth in what is divinely good, true and 
beautiful. 

The natural unfolding of a human personality ! 
How it challenges our deepest thought and 
strongest faith? How all inclusive and universal 
is the lesson? How it touches every phase of 
human existence and occupation and aspiration? 
Does it not remind us of the one supreme object 
of all our systems of education, our methods of liv- 
ing and of our sources of enjoyment and inspira- 
tion? Does it not place the seal of divine disap- 
proval upon all that is artificial, ephemeral, false 
and selfish and sinful either in the lives of in- 
dividuals or in the life of the Social Order? 

Jesus would say that there is a growth that 
comes to human lives through humility and prayer 
and a quiet uplifting of the heart to God and an 
unwavering trust in His eternal goodness that 
must be experienced before it can be understood 
and fully appreciated, and he showed in all he 
ever said and did that he had understood and 
appreciated and experienced this divine law of 
erowth in his own life. 

There is nothing in all the world comparable 
to this divine principle of growth and it has no 
possible substitutes. By acknowledging and obey- 
ing this law there comes to us the power of the 
spirit that enables us to overcome hardships and 
difficulties and to endure disappointments and 


118 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


sorrows and to live the radiant and triumphant 
life of faith, hope and love. Through the higher 
discipline and culture of this power in our lives 
we are kept in communion with the life and wisdom 
and power and Love of God: ‘‘Religion is the 
life of God in the soul of man.’’ 

‘‘Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the 
field .. . shall he not much more clothe you O 
ye of little faith?’’ 

Man is thus to find in this inner secret of growth 
a faith in the will of God that is stronger than his 
will, faith in the purpose of God that is wiser than 
his purpose, and faith in the love and goodness 
of God that are deeper than his love and goodness, 
and upon which he is to build his hope of life 
everlasting. 

‘‘Consider the lilies of the field, HOW they 
erow.’’ ‘‘Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these.’’ Consider Man! How He 
Grows! The kingdoms of the earth and the dynas- 
ties of rulers are as nothing compared with this 
divine unfolding and developing process forever 
going on in the life of the lies and in the lives 
of men. Yes! This also, ‘‘Shall be to the Lord 
for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not 
be eut off.’’ 


‘‘O Toiler of the lily, 
Thy touch is in the Man! 


119 


Consider Man! How He Grows! 


No leaf that dawns to petal 
But hints the angel plan. 
The flower horizons open! 
The blossom vaster shows! 
We hear Thy wide world’s echo,— 
See how the lily grows!’’ 
Consider Man! How He Grows! 


I20 


CHRIST’S GIFT OF HIMSELF 


It 1s more blessed to give than to receive. 
—Acts 20:35. 


THE Christmas season should mean more and more 
to us with the passing of the years, as these years 
bring to us larger thoughts, nobler aspirations and 
a deeper faith. 

With each return of the season we should get 
a little nearer to the Master’s heart and mind and 
gain for ourselves a better understanding of the 
sources of his spiritual power; to the end that the 
influence and authority of his words and example 
may do for us what they have done and are doing 
for multitudes of men and women, the world over. 

We ought always to be in search of the timeless 
messages of the Christian Faith and ever ready to 
abandon explanations of Christ’s life that do not 
explain and interpretations that do not interpret. 
In these words attributed to Jesus by the great 
Apostle to the Gentiles,—‘‘It is more blessed to 


9?) 


give than to receive,’’ is revealed the major pur- 
pose of his hfe and by making this purpose our 
own we learn how to practise the Christian Art 
of giving ourselves to others as Christ gave Him- 
self to Humanity. 


t2I 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


It is a good time for us to think of God’s pres- 
ence in the world and in human lives and to see 
in every new-born child an expression of the 
divine in the human and to pray that the time 
may come when the word ‘‘Immanuel’’—‘‘God 
with us,’’ shall be written in the hearts of all 
mothers and all fathers and inscribed on the cradle 
of infancy throughout the earth. 

Now is the time of all the year when the whole 
atmosphere should be ladened, as it were, with 
the fragrance of generosity and permeated with 
the spirit of goodwill; a period in which the heart 
has its own way unhampered by the close eal- 
culating and often the too mercenary spirit of 
every-day experience. 

It is a beautiful custom that we have of ex- 
changing tokens of love and friendship at this 
time of the year. The home coming and the 
gathering of the family circles are enriched and 
sanctified by gift of member to member, and the 
whole world is made a happier and a diviner place 
to live in because of the custom. The custom has 
come to stay. It helps to extend the rule of the 
Christ spirit in human hearts and fosters in human 
society his exalted and disinterested motives for 
service and self-sacrifice. It finds its excuse for 
being in the very heart of mankind and its sanction 
in long and tried usage. Humanity will never do 
without it. 

I22 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


It is, however, what the gift symbolizes that is 
really precious to us all. The presents as mere 
articles that we give or receive during the Christ- 
mas days are but trivial and incidental when 
viewed in the light of the underlying purpose and 
significance of it all. 

It is this view-point that we care especially to 
dwell upon, and in doing so we are led from the 
gift itself to the act of giving and from the symbol 
to what is symbolized. The art of giving consists 
of putting one’s true self into the act of giving 
so as not to allow the gift to obscure or become a 
substitute for the friendship that should find ex- 
pression through the act of giving, and this means 
the art of giving ourselves to others in the spirit 
of Jesus. 

It is not that we would make less of material 
gifts; indeed it often happens that the very giving 
of such gifts awakens in individuals the true spirit 
of friendship and brotherhood. The only thing 
for many people to do is to open their pocket-books 
more widely than they have ever been known to 
do and to give freely and liberally, even until 
it hurts; and in some mysterious way, in ways 
beyond human comprehension, love and sympathy 
are born in their hearts which may not have come 
to them in any other way. 

We may be persons of limited means. We may 
be unable to do what others are doing and what 

123 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


we would be only too glad to do were we so placed 
that we could. The virtue of giving, however, is 
never to be measured by the amount given. The 
greater cost of an article is not necessarily an evi- 
dence of the greater sincerity or affection of the 
donor. No, the true value of a gift is to be esti- 
mated in terms of life, in terms of self-denial, in 
love and goodwill, in heart-beats and not in terms 
of merchandise and silver. 

And is it not true that as we advance from child- 
hood to maturity of age and of thought we may 
think less and less of the mere outward act of 
giving and long more and more for the very 
nectar of the gift itself? There are times when it 
would be a hollow mockery to offer to our friends 
the same kind of a gift we did years before, this 
is self-evident, and more than all this, are there 
not times when any material gift would be an 
intrusion, a mar to one’s friendship? Yes, there 
are times in all our lives when we are made aware 
that it is the gift of another’s best and noblest 
self, offered with unmistakable sincerity and true 
sympathy, that is craved above all the visible and 
tangible tokens of affection. 

It is because we feel most profoundly that, 
‘““The gift without the giver is bare,’’ and that it 
is more what the token and the symbol suggest 
than what they are, be they ever so beautiful and 
costly ; it is for the sake of enriching and enobling 

124 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


the act of giving that we place the larger emphasis 
upon the motive and the underlying principle of 
giving and call attention to the deeper significance 
of the custom. 

And as we do so are we not impressed with the 
thought that to a certain extent the deepest desires 
of our hearts determine the quality of our gifts, 
or to express it somewhat differently, does not the 
kind of presents we offer others reveal the inner 
reality of our own lives? Is it not possible also 
for us to discover a way of measuring our advance 
in life by the kind of gifts we desire for our friends 
and for ourselves? 

Again, is there not always danger that the yearly 
habit of open-hearted generosity may become a con- 
ventional form, a mechanical process, something 
to participate in because it is the proper thing to 
do? Even becoming a barter in commodities, one 
party being careful not to give more than the other 
and both parties actuated by something far dif- 
ferent from the Christmas spirit of love and good- 
will? Can this not all be going on and the in- 
dividual be perfectly oblivious of the fact himself, 
or if conscious of it powerless as to know how it 
is to be changed for the better? Most certainly 
there is this danger and in order that it may be 
averted we need from time to time to examine our 
personal reasons for observing the custom and see 
if we put enough of ourselves into the act of giving. 

125 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


Will it not help us to do this to always think 
in all our giving and receiving of the tender and 
sacred ties that bind human lives together, and of 
the holy relationships that exist in the family circle 
and among mankind? 

To this end can we not, as we look forward to 
the many glad seasons that we hope may be ours, 
can we not as we do this say to ourselves indi- 
vidually and all together that, we want and will 
henceforth try to select for our friends something 
that will express the deepest truths and highest 
ideals of life? The book that is not only enter- 
taining but instructive and uplifting. The motto 
eard that expresses more than a pleasing rhyme 
and the Christmas note that is fragrant with the 
sentiment of sincerity and loyalty. 

Is it not possible for us to take these or similar 
considerations with us and allow them to influence 
our choice of presents, as far as possible, and so 
help us to select those tokens that symbolize the 
rare and beautiful sentiments and emotions of 
friendship? This means not only the putting of 
ourselves into the gift but the actual giving of our 
own true selves in the Christmas spirit of love and 
goodwill. No gift however beautiful and expensive 
can ever be a substitute for this the most precious 
of them all. 

Does it appeal to us as often and as strongly as 
it might that in all we read or know about the 

126 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


life of Jesus we have no evidence that he ever gave 
a gift to any of his friends? There are of course 
many satisfactory reasons for this, if such was the 
case ; however, it appears of the deepest significance 
that he whose life and teachings have so largely 
inspired the spirit of giving in the world and in 
human hearts has left no record of having given 
anything but himself to his friends and to 
humanity. 

He took little children in his arms and blessed 
them. He lifted the cup of cold water to parched 
lips. He penetrated to the inner consciousness 
of evil doers and spoke the regenerating word. 
He gave love, goodwill, service, faith and spiritual 
heroism in the presence of the Unseen and Eternal. 
This is one of the most obvious lessons of his life 
and in it we learn of the Christ method of giving 
one’s self to others. 

Long ages before the Christian Era men knew 
that it was right and best to love each other. They 
knew it was wrong and sinful to rob and cheat. 
It was not and is not because of lack of knowledge 
and understanding that men forget the whisper- 
ings of their better nature; it is because of their 
sluggish hearts and deadened wills; it is because 
they will not heed and obey the great and eternal 
laws of life and love that God has written upon 
the fleshy tablets of all human hearts. 

It needed Jesus to give his life. It needed 

127 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


him to live what the ages before him had been 
only talking about in order that men might see 
and obey this divine command of giving to man- 
kind loyalty, justice, friendship, service and good- 
will. The persons who give the most precious gift 
to the world thus, as did Jesus, give us of them- 
selves. 

Do we ask how and in what manner this gift 
of gifts is to be offered to those about us and in our 
time and generation? We can only answer for 
ourselves and in the language of the wise that,— 
‘‘Kind words are the music of the world’’ and 
that, ‘‘There is a vast deal of vital air in loving 
words’’ and that, ‘‘Infinite is the help man ean 
yield to man.’’ 

Many a soul is longing and hungering for a 
word or a look of approval for the sacrifice they 
are patiently and loyally making day after day in 
the larger service of virtue and truth and in the 
nobler service of their fellowmen. Many a life 
would be brightened and strengthened, yes, and 
prolonged by a little attention which lies within 
the power of every person to give to another. 

The people who have helped you the most may 
perhaps have never given you a present in all their 
lives and you may hardly be on more than speaking 
terms with them; a hand shake, a kind word, an 
appreciative inquiry into your life problems may 
have been all, but it was enough; it was everything 

128 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


to you and so long as you live you ean never forget 
what it meant to you: Such people give to the 
world their best and noblest selves. 

We covet the best gifts for ourselves and one of 
the surest ways of receiving them is to covet the 
same for others. ‘‘The best way to get help is to 
give help. The surest way to gain recognition is 
to give recognition and friendship and service to 
all who need.”’ 

How often a winsome disposition and kindly 
interest exercised toward another has unlocked the 
secret chambers of his soul and allowed the gifts of 
God’s richer bounties of the spirit to enter and take 
possession of the inner life and being? How often 
what is needed is the gift of a ‘‘Lovely thought,’’ 
and is the true giving of ourselves? Someone has 
beautifully said, ‘‘Instead of a gem or even a 
flower, east the gift of a lovely thought into the 
heart of a friend.’’ 

Surely we cannot give what we do not possess. 
After all, giving, if the more important, is only one 
half of the story ; the other half is that of receiving 
in order that we may give. In order that we may 
give as Jesus gave we must receive as he received, 
and his power to give came to him from his 
faith in Unseen and Eternal Realities and through 
his filial obedience to the will of his Heavenly 
Father. 

He would remind us, however, that the more 

129 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


royally we give in his spirit and keep giving in 
all times and seasons the more constantly and the 
more precious will be the gifts bestowed upon us 
from above. 

It would seem that giving ourselves to others 
in such wise opened for us the crystal fountains 
of Infinite Love from whence the living waters 
flow. We are then, by our giving to— 


‘‘Make channels for the streams of love, 
Where they may broadly run; 

And love has overflowing streams, 

To fill them every one. 


‘‘But if at any time we cease 
Such channels to provide, 

The very founts of love for us 
Will soon be parched and dried. 


‘‘For we must share, if we would keep 
That blessing from above; 

Ceasing to give, we cease to have; 
Such is the law of love.’’ 


We need to cultivate more than we do the spirit 
of giving with no thought of reward; just giving 
and doing and serving as did Jesus that the uni- 
versal cause of Brotherhood may be advanced and 
the Kingdom of truth, justice and merey may 

130 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


more firmly be established in the conduct of men 
and in the affairs of nations. Somewhat in the 
same sense as ‘‘ Virtue is its own reward,’’ so the 
Christian kind of giving is also its own reward. 
It is a fact that they who have most believed in 
and practised this higher art of living have found 
for themselves a joy and a blessedness that are 
found nowhere else and in no other way. 

Some time ago there appeared in a newspaper 
a notice that was so unusual that it will always 
be remembered, it read,—‘‘ Wanted! Someone to 
read to. Hours,—between eight and ten o’clock 
in the evening. No pay!’’ Here was a person 
willing to give herself to others and her reward 
was in the giving and in the joy of serving. 

The deeper significance of the Christian Art of 
giving then means that we are not to make less 
but more of the gift; we are to save the beautiful 
custom of the Christmas season from becoming 
a mere conventional form; doing this by putting 
our thought, our affection and our faith into the 
gift. We are to bear in mind that not only the 
most costly but the most precious gift is forever 
above the price of diamonds and rubies, and this 
the Gift of Goodwill; this was the divine theme 
running through the Christ Life. 

Life is a constant struggle for existence. It 
is made harder by all that is wrong and inhar- 
monious. It is not the difficulties, the hardships or 


131 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


the adversity that fall to the lot of man that weaken » 
and discourage him half so much as injustice and 
ill-will and selfishness; these cause worry and 
worry kills more than work and hardship. 

It is the spirit of goodwill that creates an at- 
mosphere in which one finds it possible to live 
his best life and do his best work. This is true 
everywhere, in the home, the church, the school, 
the shop, the store, the community and in any and 
all phases of human thought and activity. 

It is the Christmas spirit, with all its divine 
meanings, allowed to have the right of way in our 
lives throughout the entire year and throughout 
all the years of our lives that will help more than 
anything else to hasten the coming of a better and 
happier day for me and for you and for all the 
members of the great human family. 

‘‘Tt is more blessed to give than to receive,’’ 
if we receive as Jesus received and give ourselves 
to others in His spirit. 

A true and beautiful appreciation of Christ’s 
Gift of Himself is found in a poem by Dr. E. H. 
Chapin. 


‘When long the soul had slept in chains, 
And man to man was stern and cold; 
When love and worship were but strains, 
That swept the gifted chords of old; 
By shady mount and peaceful lake, 

132 


Christ’s Gift of Himself 


A meek and lowly stranger came. 
The weary drank the words he spake, 
The poor and feeble blessed his name. 


‘*No shrine he reared in poarch or grove, 
No vested priests around him stood; 

He went about to teach and prove 

The lofty work of doing good. 

Said he to those who with him trod,— 
‘Would ye be my disciples? 

Then evince your ardent love for God, 
By the kind deeds ye do for men.’ 


‘“He went where frenzy held its rule; 
Where sickness breathed its spell of pain; 
By famed Bethesdia’s mystic pool 

And by the darkened gates of Nain. 

He soothed the mourner’s troubled breast ; 
He raised the sinner’s contrite head, 
And on the loved one’s lowly rest, 

The light of better life he shed.”’ 


133 


THE INNER WITNESS 


The Kingdom of God is within you.— 
Matt. 16:26. 


MANKIND from earliest times down to the present 
moment has never been without some form of 
belief in immortality. This belief was of course 
very simple and ill-defined in the minds of primi- 
tive people. In their dreams they thought that 
their spirits left their bodies and wandered far and 
wide in unfamiliar and unseen realms of the upper 
skies and returned to their bodies at the moment 
of waking. 

Many believed that immortality was not for all 
men but was to be conferred upon certain indi- 
viduals and withheld from others. The Greeks 
and the Romans believed that now and then some 
one of their national heroes,—such as Alexander 
the Great, or Caesar, or the emperor Augustus 
might find the favor of Heaven and enter into the 
companionship of the Gods. 

There have been many books written on the 
subject of Immortality in modern times and in 
some of them the authors have emphasized this 
old conception of a limited, a restricted, a condi- 
tional Immortality. Their contention is that it is 


134 


The Inner Witness 


not for everyone but is for those of the human 
race who strongly desire and qualify themselves 
for it: ‘‘Perhaps the longing to be so, helps make 
the soul immortal!”’ 

A very suggestive title to one of these books 
is,—‘The Winning of Immortality.’’ The theory 
of the writer is that,—‘‘Man is not necessarily 
immortal but he may become so; or though not 
immortal, he is immortable.’’ His argument is 
based on the principle of growth found at the 
centre of everything and of human life and per- 
sonality. He contends that,—‘‘Growth in both 
directions, downward and upward, must be pos- 
sible, since growth is essential to life, and direction 
from within is essential to growth.’’ As we might 
easily anticipate his conclusion is that if the 
erowth is downward the process leads to the death 
and extinction of personality, and if upward it 
leads to the larger life and the permanent existence 
of personality. This is only one of a great variety 
of opinions held by those who are writing on the 
subject, and like most of them it fails to take into 
consideration all sides of the question. 

As we have said the people of early times held 
some form of the belief in a future existence. 
This belief expressed itself among the Chinese in 
the worship of ancestors. In Brahmanism this 
belief was manifested in what is known as the 
Transmigration of souls. The doctrine of Nir- 


135 


The Inner Witness 


vana, found in the religion of Buddha, was none 
other than a form of the belief in immortality. 

Of all the people who lived before the Christian 
Era the Egyptians were the ones who held the 
strongest belief in everlasting life. They had the 
most highly developed form of the belief and as 
might be expected their sacred writings entitled 
‘‘The Book of the Dead’’ dealt largely with the 
subject. 

The immortality of the soul was firmly believed 
in by the King and the people. The souls of the 
departed were represented as being conducted 
through the Under-world by Osiris, the God of the 
dead. Among the many Gods worshipped by the 
Egyptians Osiris was the most human and popular 
of the dieties. He was regarded as having taken 
upon himself the form and nature of man. 

When the early Christian missionaries sought 
converts to the new faith in England, the King 
called for the opinion of his advisers as to the 
merits of the new form of religion, about which | 
they had never heard. He asked them what they 
thought of it, and one from among their number 
spoke up and said,—‘‘I will tell you, O King, 
what man’s life is like. Sometimes, when your 
hall is lit up for supper on a wild winter’s night, 
and warmed by a fire; out of the rain and snow 
a sparrow flies in by one door, takes shelter for 

136 


The Inner Witness 


a moment in the warmth, and then flies out again 
by another door, and is lost in the stormy darkness. 
‘“No one in the hall sees the bird before it enters 
nor after it has gone forth; it is only seen while 
it hovers near the fire. So tarries for a moment 
the life of man in our sight; but what has gone 
before it, and what will come after it, we know 
not. If the new teaching can tell us anything 
about these things, let us listen and follow.’’ 

We are forever asking ourselves what shall we 
think, what shall we believe and how shall we 
adjust our lives and conduct to the world of 
unseen realities that lies just beyond the range of 
human sight and understanding? As one by one 
those near and dear to us respond to the ‘‘One 
clear eall;’’ as the vast Unknown is peopled more 
and more with familiar faces we turn with a deep 
sense of gratitude to any source of wisdom or ex- 
perience or faith that can enlighten our eyes and 
make brave our hearts within us. 

The survival of the immortal hope in the life 
of Humanity has been one of the most remarkable 
facts in history. While our understanding and 
explanations of this hope differ from those of 
primitive people our interest in the subject is 
identical with theirs. It has sometimes been 
thought that the investigations of science might 
endanger if not destroy man’s belief in a future 
state of existence but such has not been the case. 


137 


The Inner Witness 


No discoveries that have ever been made by 
scientist or scholar have ever been able to make 
such a belief appear impossible or irrational. On 
the contrary many of the theories worked out by 
science, such as the Conservation of Energy, the 
Correlation of Forees and the Indestructibility 
of Matter, have unexpectedly and _ happily 
strengthened the belief. The more searching the 
investigations the more wonderful does life become. 
Today there is a close friendship, based upon a com- 
munity of interests, between the man of profound 
knowledge and the man of deep faith; and while 
approaching the great problems of finite existence 
from opposite directions they find themselves at 
one in ‘‘ Thinking thoughts that do wander through 
Eternity ;’’ and together they become seekers for 
the larger truth and the larger life. They are 
at one in maintaining that ‘‘The spirit searcheth 
all things; yea, the deep things of God.’’ They 
are at one in saying,— ‘Know then, man has all 
that Nature hath and more, and in that more lie 
all his hopes of good.’’ 

We are coming to realize that no faith which 
eannot survive the most searching examination of 
the mind can have any lasting influence over the 
thought life or emotional life of man; provided 
that such an examination be fair, just and honest. 
On the other hand we are coming to realize that it 
is just as true that no knowledge that is not in- 


138 


The Inner Witness 


spired by a profound faith in the reliability of 
the Universe in all its parts can have any per- 
manent place in the forward march of mankind 
through the ages. 

‘*T cannot believe that God has constituted the 
world upon a plan by which it conspires to de- 
ceive us.”” This was the saying of a scholar who 
was also a man of faith. These words appear 
near the close of an essay he was writing upon the 
vast subject of Liberty, of how man came by his 
liberty. ‘‘Why did he write that?’’ Asked some 
one who knew, as a personal friend, the reason 
for his having done so, and who wanted others to 
know as well, 

‘‘Because (he said) in the midst of the writing 
of that essay in which cold reason and experience 
of the world were combined, he (Buckle) heard 
as he came to the last pages the report of his 
mother’s death. His one passion, his overmaster- 
ing affection, his inextinguishable desire for com- 
munion with her were the inspiration of these last 
lines in which he declares, as we declare, that he 
could not believe in a Being who would organize 
a world to deceive us. So we have become accus- 
tomed to thinking that every flying signal of in- 
stinct is to be attended to, every beckoning hand 
of desire leads somewhere, every natural appetite 
is to be honored, directed, regulated, instructed 


139 


The Inner Witness 


and the passion for eternal life is fundamental 
to the constitution of man.’’ 

Emerson once said that,—‘‘ All serious souls 
have a better belief in immortality than they can 
give grounds for.’’ And a noted theologian (Dr. 
Martineau) said that,—‘‘ We do not believe immor- 
tality because we have proved it, but are forever 
trying to prove it because we believe it.’’ 

‘‘Tf the new teaching ean tell us anything about 
these things, let us listen and follow.’’ The Easter 
time brings us to the teachings of the Christian 
Faith on this subject and to the personal belief 
of the Master. 

In one of the heart to heart talks Jesus fre- 
quently had- with his disciples, in which he un- 
folded the deepest meanings of his gospel, Simon 
Peter exclaimed,—‘‘Lord to whom shall we go? 
Thou hast the words of Eternal Life.’’ It was 
St. Paul who said in a later day that, ‘‘Jesus 
Christ hath brought life and immortality to light 
through the Gospel.’’ 

‘‘So tarries the life of man in our sight.’’ The 
fact that the hfe of man so tarries in our sight 
had very little if any significance to the King and 
his advisers, but it had a world of meaning to the 
Teacher of Galilee. It was incomprehensible to 
the worldly minded people of that age or of any 
age that the life of man itself might be its own 
best interpreter, and that within a living person- 

140 


The Inner Witness 


ality might be found evidences of its origin and 
intimations of its destiny. Among the nations 
of ancient times the life of the average individual 
did not count for a great deal. He might be a 
fighting unit in the army of the world conqueror 
or he might be a marching unit in the pomp and 
ceremony in the great public parade given in honor 
of his king, or he might be a working unit in 
building the great sepulchres of the Pharaohs, but 
in it all a very low valuation was placed upon his 
own life and personality. 

If the poet could say of the little flower; ‘‘ Little 
flower if I could know what you are, root and all 
and all in all, I should know what God and man 
is;’’ how much more could Jesus say of a living 
personality? It is because he saw in just an or- 
dinary average individual life so much to admire, 
to think about and to wonder at; it is because he 
saw in the mystery of personality something that 
transcended all human understanding; it is be- 
eause he saw in love and duty and service and 
faith something indeseribably beautiful and sub- 
lime; it is because Jesus felt in his own heart the 
vitalizing power of a better and larger existence; 
it is because life here and now could mean so 
much that it was possible for it to mean still more 
in times to come; this gives us the key to what 
Jesus believed about life itself and about life 
everlasting. The religious experience and the 


I41 


The Inner Witness 


inner witness of the spirit within his own heart 
enabled him to feel the presence of the divine 
life within himself and within the lives of men 
and women and little children. No one has ever 
seen such worth and dignity and sacredness in 
human life as did Jesus. He is forever saying 
to man that the life of God, the safety of God, 
the immortality of God, ‘‘The Kingdom of God is 
within you.”’ 

To the prophetic vision of Jesus immortality 
was as true when Abraham, Isaae and Jacob lived 
as it was when he was alive. The laws of gravita- 
tion and the laws of the Solar System can be no 
more real to the mind of the student of today than 
the belief in immortality was to the life and af- 
fection of Christ. 

To him immortality was not something man 
was to choose to put on or off as he desired; it 
was not something to be earned by man’s efforts; 
it was not withheld from some as a punishment 
for sin, neither was it bestowed upon others as a 
reward for virtue; no mystic rites or ceremonies 
were needed to make it possible, but it was the 
natural and inevitable condition awaiting all men, 
irrespective of their choosing to have it so or not. 
It was a part of God’s plan for the children He had 
created. The supreme Architect had deemed it 
fitting to include the immortality of man in His 
Blue Print of the Universe. 

142 


The Inner Witness 


According to this way of thinking and believing 
all that man is asked to do, or that it is really 
possible for him to do, is to deepen the quality 
of his life, sharpen its outlines, enlarge its vision 
and broaden its scope and exercise to the limit 
all the talents and powers and capacities with 
which he finds himself endowed, ever bearing in 
mind the sacredness of all human lives and of 
all human relationships. 


This testimony of the Inner Witness made life 
very precious, very sacred, very beautiful and 
divine to Jesus. He sought the inner meaning of 
things and avoided the transitory and dissatisfying 
phases of human lfe and experience. God was 
alive, man was alive, the world was alive; there 
was no land of shades through which the spirits of 
men would need to be piloted; instead of a bound- 
less abyss of darkness the future world was a 
region of life and light; In my Father’s house 
there is much room, or there are many rooms, 
and the passage from one to another is simply a 
change from scenes that are already beautiful and 
divinely suggestive to other scenes that are still 
more real and beautiful and divine,— 


‘‘Not so much even as the lifting of a latch, 
Only a step into the open air, 
Out of a tent already luminous 
With light that shines through its transparent 
walls.’’ 
143 


The Inner Witness 


On the authority of Jesus we would ask our- 
selves,—where are we to ever find any evidences 
of life eternal unless, first of all we find them in 
our own consciousness? If mankind had never 
found anything in this life worth living for and 
worth striving for and worth dying for, think 
you, they would ever have had any desire to live 
forever ? 

Has not this great belief been evolved out of 
the very constitution of human thought and ex- 
“perience and belief? Is it not because this life 
fails to exhaust human possibilities and fails to 
completely satisfy human needs that men have 
slowly come to believe in an existence for them- 
selves that shall never end? 

No one can escape the inertia of doubt; no one 
ean be free from the rising and falling of the tides 
of the spirit; no one can escape the many feelings 
of depression, of loneliness or even of worthless- 
ness that sweep through the soul from time to 
time; but are there not many satisfactory ex- 
planations of these phases of life; and besides, are 
we ever willing to make it our permanent home 
within their unfriendly borders? 

We cannot escape, if we try to do so, the hap- 
pier and better moments of human existence. The 
enticing influence of the Unseen. The suggestive- 
ness of the starry heavens. The glory of the noon- 

144 


The Inner Witness 


day sun and the charm of the evening twilight. 
The stirrings of the inexpressible within us. The 
pleadings of the stronger virtues and the example 
of courageous and victorious lives. These are for- 
ever in evidence and must be reckoned with. Life 
is not all sunshine neither is it all shadow, and 
the most wonderful thing about it all is that those 
who have attempted the most while they have 
suffered the most, they all confess to have ex- 
perienced and enjoyed the most. 

Thus the supreme emphasis of the Easter time 
is upon the inner life of man and the abysmal 
deeps of personality. At this time we pass from 
our thought of that which is indestructible in 
Nature to our thought of that which is indestrue- 
tible in man. We turn from the Springtime of 
the Soil to the Springtime of the Soul. 

It has been beautifully said, and in the spirit 
of Jesus, that, ‘‘The hfe of the spirit is the evi- 
dence of immortality.’’ We cannot believe other- 
wise than that human lives partake of the mystery 
and majesty of seen and unseen realities and are 
formed as worlds are formed. In our bodies we are 
akin to the most distant star and in our powers 
of thought and apprehension we are akin to the 
great Architect who has brought law and order 
out of chaos and confusion, light and life out of 
darkness and death. 


145 


The Inner Witness 


‘*] stand amid the eternal ways, 
And what is mine shall know my face.’’ 


Yes,—‘‘Souls are built as temples are.’’ In 
the erection of a great cathedral there is the 
Architect with his plan. There are the builders 
and the materials of construction. The Architect 
sees the end from the beginning and knows where 
it will be necessary to place each stone for both 
the strength and beauty of the finished work. The 
builders see it only in parts, as section after section 
is completed. However, as time goes on form and 
proportion emerge from out the seeming chaos 
of mortar and stone and wood and stagings and 
at last the collossal grandeur of a St. Peter’s or 
a St. Paul’s is a reality. 

We see the Soul Temple only in parts as section 
after section is completed. Even its foundations 
are hidden from our view and its dome is in- 
visible. Nevertheless, from the form and propor- 
tion emerging from out the seeming chaos of flesh, 
matter and the stagings of a bodily existence we 
perceive that something better is to be the final 
outcome and that together with the building of 
physical powers there has been the quiet building 
of spiritual powers that transcend all human un- 
derstanding. 

Thus man stands at the pinnacle of Creation. 

146 


The Inner Witness 


He is the flower and fruitage of all the inorganic 
and organic forces that have been at work in the 
_ world to give him substance and form, from time 
immemorial; and finally, in the fullness of time 
there was imparted to him the power to see and 
understand and cooperate with the very process 
that has cradled him and nourished him and lifted 
him from one stage of development to another, 
from one level of existence to higher and still 
higher levels. 

This was the most sublime moment in the whole 
existence of man. Hitherto he had been, as it were, 
a figure in clay being moulded into shape by un- 
seen hands, reaching through Nature. Henceforth, 
he is to be a co-laborer with the great Architect 
of his being. He is to share with the Architect 
his plans and purposes, his vision and creative 
power. He is to have personality and responsibil- 
ity and life more and more abundantly. 

Through all the timeless messages of the Chris- 
tian Faith shines forth the thought of God. From 
the time Jesus taught his disciples to pray,— 
‘Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy 
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on 
earth, as it is in Heaven,’’ to the time he yielded 
up his life on the cross and said,—‘‘ Father, into 
Thy hands I commend my spirit,’’ he never felt 
himself to be alone, or unaided or unguided. And 

147 


The Inner Witness 


out of the consciousness of the presence of God in 
his own heart came a spiritual heroism that en- 
abled him to face the dangers and persecutions 
of the present life and the mystery and uncertain- 
ties of the unseen and eternal world with a calm 
confidence and a perfect assurance that have never 
been equalled. 


And on no less an authority than his own we 
ean say that this same assurance and confidence 
shall be imparted to all who live as he lived, who 
labor as he labored, who think as he thought, 
who judge as he judged, who forgive as he for- 
gave, who love as he loved, who serve as he served, 
who seek as he sought and who worship as he 
worshipped. 

‘“The Kingdom of God is within you.’’ ‘‘Know 
ye not that ye are the temple of God and that 
the spirit of God dwelleth in you?’’ ‘‘The life 
of the spirit is the evidence of immortality.’’ ‘‘ All 
that I have seen teaches Me to trust the Creator 
for all I have not seen. Whatever His providence 
has in store for us it must be something large and 
generous and in the great style of His works.’’ 


‘‘One thought I have, my ample creed, 
So deep it is and broad, 
And equal to my every need,— 
It is the thought of God. 
148 


The Inner Witness 


‘‘T ask not far before to see, 
But take in trust my road; 

Life, death and immortality 
Are in my thought of God.’’ 


‘‘Soar we now where Christ hath led, 
Following our exalted Head; 

Made like Him, like Him we rise,— 
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.’’ 


149 


THE VICTORIOUS LIFE 


In the world ye shall have tribulations ; 
but be of good cheer; for I have overcome 
the world.—St. John 16:33. 


WHEN Alexander was a boy he was fearful lest 
his father, Philip of Macedonia, should conquer 
all the nations of the world and so leave nothing 
for him to do when he grew to maturity. It is 
said that he was saddened by his Father’s many 
victories and on one occasion exclaimed,—‘ My 
father will leave nothing for me to do.’’ 

What Jesus meant by overcoming the world 
was something entirely different from what over- 
coming the world meant to the people of his time 
and generation; different not only to his contem- 
poraries but different to the’ people of all ages, 
living before or since the Christian Era. 

The prevailing belief among nearly all nations, 
from before the reign of Alexander the Great down 
to the last war, has been that the world was to be 
overcome by the power of the sword; that it could 
and was to be overcome by the power of love and 
righteousness has been laughed out of court. The 
appeal has ever been to the gospel of force and the 

150 


The Victorious Life 


struggle has largely been between empire builders 
and empire destroyers. 

We know practically nothing concerning the 
life and activities of Jesus from childhood up to 
the time of his appearance as a public teacher - 
at the age of about thirty. We may be sure, how- 
ever, that these years of youth and early manhood 
were full of the kind of experiences and influences 
and studies and reflections that were preparing 
him for his mission among mankind. He was 
brought up in his home town of Nazareth in 
Galilee. He learned the earpenter’s trade of Joseph 
his father. He was instructed by the very wise 
and noble rabbi, Hillel. He must have entered 
into whatever was going on in his community; 
in its work and recreations and worship. He must 
have lived very intimately with the birds of the 
air, the flowers of the field, the glories of the 
morning sunrise and the evening twilight. He 
must have communed with the visible forms of 
God’s creation until what was deepest in his own 
heart rose in quiet majesty to meet what was 
deepest in the heart of Nature and what he saw 
reflected in the hearts of his fellowmen. 

And what is not to be overlooked and what must 
have had a direct bearing upon his early educa- 
tion in helping to shape his thoughts and ideals 
is the fact that Galilee was situated upon one of 
the main trade routes of the world and that traders 


I51 


The Victorious Life 


and caravans from all over the world were fre- 
quently passing through the town of Nazareth. 
These caravans did something more than merely 
transfer articles of merchandise from one people 
to another; in addition to this they were, what 
might well be called,—Travelling Universities. The 
people were as anxious to hear what the traders 
had to say about their own countries as they were 
to purchase the wares they had to sell. As war 
was the chief occupation of kings and princes and 
emperors and peoples the traders naturally would 
tell more of armies and battles and victories and 
defeats than about anything else; but they would 
also tell about the daily life and occupations of 
their people and about their great leaders who had 
achieved renown in any vocation or oceupation,— 
in learning, statesmanship, business and the like. 

Now it is undoubtedly true that Jesus must 
have known what had been going on for centuries 
outside of his own country of Palestine, and that 
he must have been familiar with the exploits of 
the great leaders who had appeared from time to 
time among the various nations of mankind,—such 
as Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Alexander, Hannibal 
and Caesar. And furthermore, it is undoubtedly 
true that Jesus must have felt in his own heart 
the ‘‘Vital Urge’’ of world leadership, but he 
clearly saw that the world was sadly in need of a 
different kind of leadership than it had ever had. 

1c 


The Victorious Life 


He saw that his own people and the people of other 
countries as well were as “‘Sheep without a shep- 
herd’’ and that those who had had leadership 
thrust upon them by birth, or had been in a posi- 
tion to assume leadership, were as ‘‘ Blind leaders 
of the blind’’ and that both people and leaders 
were continually falling into the ditch. 

In the person of Christ a new and a superior 
type of world leadership was introduced into the 
life of our common humanity. In the timeless 
messages of the Christian Faith the eternal con- 
flict between the gospel of force and the gospel of 
love was clearly defined. It was a clear-cut dis- 
tinction between the unrighteous and the righteous 
exercise of power and from that time on and 
throughout all succeeding ages the conflict was to 
be between the type of world leadership exempli- 
fied in Jesus of Nazareth and that type of world 
leadership exemplified in Philip of Macedonia. 

Jesus saw the utter futility of this system of 
empire building and empire destroying. He not 
only saw its inhuman aspects but he saw its failure 
to produce any permanent and beneficient results 
in the lives of individuals or in the affairs of 
nations. The method gave no sense of security 
to anybody and led nowhere in particular, unless 
it could be said to lead straight to chaos and was 
confusion confounded. The process involved the 
survival of the strong and heartless and cruel 


153 


The Victorious Life 


only so long as there were not to be found others 
who were stronger and more heartless and more 
eruel. And what was still more distressing to 
the mind and heart of Jesus was the fact that 
no one in all the world seemed to be at all anxious 
to have any change made in these ideals that had 
so long dominated the world: The system of 
empire building and empire destroying had been 
going on for so many centuries that most every- 
body seemed to have come to the conclusion that 
it could never be otherwise. 

It is just at this point that the life purpose of 
Jesus is brought clearly to our view. At the very 
beginning of his eareer as a public speaker and 
leader he consciously and deliberately turned 
away from the old ideals of leadership and set 
his face in the opposite direction. He must have 
known what this decision was to cost him for 
already John the Baptist had been beheaded for 
a very slight offence against those in places of 
authority. 

His prophetic soul must have anticipated sor- 
row and suffering and possible death, for he knew 
that he would be misunderstood by the represen- 
tatives of Rome and also that he would be mis- 
understood and turned against by the people of his 
own race. His people were looking for a leader 
who should be to them both a military and a re- 
ligious genius; a person who should be able to re- 


154 


The Victorious Life 


store the political independence and greatness of 
King David’s reign. This is what they meant 
when they said to him,—‘Art Thou the Christ 
that should come or look we for another?’’ This 
is what prompted their question about their politi- 
eal obligations to the Roman emperor, ‘‘Is it law- 
ful to pay tribute to Caesar?’’ 

Here we probably have the greatest temptation 
that Jesus had to overcome. He could easily have 
held the affection and homage of his people if 
he had become their military hero and helped them 
to gain their freedom from bondage to Rome. 
However, he knew better than they that war with 
Rome meant for his people annihilation. It was 
in overcoming this temptation that Jesus began 
his work of overcoming the world. No soldier 
ever faced the uncertainties of a campaign with 
more fortitude and bravery than did Jesus as he 
came forth from the wilderness to carry forward 
the work that he felt himself divinely commis- 
sioned to do. 

The temptations of Jesus are given to us in a 
highly picturesque manner in the gospel of Mat- 
thew. The old love of conquest and lust of empire 
occupy a prominent place in the list. We read 
that ‘‘The devil taketh him up into an exceeding 
high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms 
of the world, and the glory of them; And saith 
unto him, all these things will I give Thee, if 


T55 


The Victorious Infe 


Thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith 
Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is 
written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and Him only shalt thou serve.’’ 

Alexander could conquer the most of the world 
with his strong and well equipped battalions be- 
hind him but in the moment of victory he was 
unable to rule his own spirit and so went down 
in miserable defeat. Christ calls man to a greater 
conflict than was ever dreamed of by an Alexander. 
He sought to equip man for the victory over him- 
self. According to Jesus man had always been 
his own worst enemy and if he ever was to come 
to the true dignity and glory of full manhood he 
must subdue himself, he must conquer himself, 
he must place a high valuation upon his own life 
and the lives of others, he must be unwilling to 
profit at another’s expense, he must seek the good 
of all as earnestly as he seeks his own good, he 
must humble himself in the presence of Almighty 
God that he may learn of purposes greater than 
his own and be given the wisdom, the incentive and 
the power to live the strong, the radiant, the vic- 
torious life of the spirit. 

Christ was the first member of the great human 
family to come to full maturity of life and being. 
For the first time in history mankind was to have 
a world leader who knew what was in man, who 
knew how low a man could sink and how high a 


156 


The Victorious Life 


man could rise in the scale of being, who could 
take up into his thought and affection the many 
and trying problems of human life and find their 
solution: Christ was the first to live the victorious 
life in his own person, completely. He became 
a safe leader to follow because he succeeded where 
Alexander failed. He was supreme in the empire 
of the Spirit. He was upheld by the mysterious 
power of love and faith that made him faithful 
unto death. 

Jesus had as definite a plan of campaign as 
any world conqueror ever had but as his con- 
ception of human life differed from the prevailing 
conception of mankind his plan of campaign and 
his method of conquest were very much unlike 
the old and traditional plan of campaign and its 
method of conquest. 

He ealled for a great reversal in the popular 
conception of human life itself and in human 
relationships. He shifted the scenes of conflict 
and the fields of battle from the outer world where 
man met man in a death struggle to the inner 
world of mind and conscience where the struggle 
was for the larger, the deeper, the more abundant 
life of personality. He called for a change in the 
ideas, the motives, the desires, the purposes, the 
ambitions, the ideals, the vision and the faith of 
his own people and the people of all lands. 

His own faith and his own vision and purposes 


157 


The Victorious Life 


were all inclusive and he saw what was funda- 
mental and universal to all humanity. He saw that 
the basic needs were the same for all the contend- 
ing nations, for the small as for the large,—for 
the weak as for the strong and for the vanquished 
as for the victorious. He saw that the energies 
of men and the resources of nations ought to be 
re-directed and instead of being used for selfish 
and ignoble ends should be devoted to the great 
task of building up the Kingdom of truth and 
love and righteousness in the hearts and lives of 
men and that the energies of men should be used 
in overcoming their personal trials and sorrows 
and tribulations and in helping others to do the 
same. 

With his life purpose in mind Jesus chose 
twelve men to be his immediate disciples, and later 
he appointed seventy others, and these he in- 
structed and equipped to be missionaries of the 
new gospel. For about three years he worked 
as it is only possible for one to work who is con- 
scious of having a great vision and with it a world 
mission. No Cyrus, no Alexander, no Caesar was 
ever possessed by a more absorbing ambition to 
bring all nations to their feet than Jesus was pos- 
sessed by a divine passion to bring all mankind 
to his way of thinking and speaking and living 
and belweving. 

The common people heard Him gladly and wel- 

158 


The Victorious Life 


ecomed him with open arms but the Scribes and 
Pharisees were suspicious of the new teaching 
from the beginning and as they learned more of 
the spirit and method of his life they grew more 
uneasy, and finally they decided that he was a 
dangerous enemy to their religion and its institu- 
tions and cherished traditions. 

We know all too well what happened. After 
he had spent about three years going in and out 
among the people of Palestine and had become 
widely known as a great and powerful personality, 
St. Matthew tells us of the impression he made 
upon his audiences by saying that ‘‘The multitudes 
were astonished at his teachings for he taught 
them as one having authority and not as their 
Seribes:’’ after he had spoken forth those won- 
derful parables that have become the priceless pos- 
session of the human race, and again and again had 
touched upon the deeper meanings of life, of truth, 
of justice, of love, of service, of prayer and of 
worship he determined to take his disciples and 
go to Jerusalem. It was his wish to be there 
during the feast of the Passover, when the city 
would be thronged with people from all over Pales- 
tine; this would give him the opportunity he 
desired, that of putting the new gospel to an open 
test in the great and holy city of the prophets. 

He told two of his disciples to procure for him 
a colt, and when they had done this and had put 


159 


The Victorious Life 


their garments on the colt Jesus sat on the colt 
and they started on their journey from Bethany 
to Jerusalem. On the way they were joined by 
many others and as the procession proceeded it 
grew larger and larger so that it had the appear- 
ance of being a public ovation to the Master. In 
the account of Mark we read that,—‘‘ Many spread 
their cloaks on the road, and others green branches 
which they had cut from the fields. And those 
in front and those who followed cried,— 


Hosanna! 

Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
Lord! 

Blessed is the kingdom that cometh, the king- 
dom of our Father David! 

Hosanna in the highest!’’ 


In the midst of a large concourse of people 
Jesus passed through the city gates; this is what 
is known as the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into 
Jerusalem. Then followed in rapid succession 
those closing scenes of his life. The denunciation 
of the Pharisees for their religious hypocrisy; the 
cleansing of the Temple; the breaking of the bottle 
of precious ointment upon the feet of Jesus; the 
scene in which he is asked,—‘‘Is it lawful to 
give tribute to Caesar?’’ The last supper; the 
prayer in the garden of Gethsemane; the betrayal; 
the arrest; Peter’s denial; the trial before the 

160 


The Victorious Life 


High Priests and the second trial before Pilate ;— 
and finally, the mocking, the scourging and the 
erucifixion. 

If it ever can be true in this world that,— 
‘One with God is a majority,’’ it was true of him 
who paid ‘‘the last full measure of devotion’’ on 
Calvary’s brow. In the death of Christ the gospel 
of love achieved its first great victory over the 
gospel of force. In the light of the new dispensa- 
tion the darkness of the old dispensation was to be 
dispelled and henceforth the unrighteous exercise 
of power was to be gradually supplanted by the 
exercise of the higher qualities of reason and con- 
science and affection. 

The long expected Messiah of the Jews became 
the great Kmancipator of the human race. Jesus 
Christ is the Mt. Everest in our celestial land- 
scape, the Columbus on God’s uncharted sea of 
life and love and reality and the spiritual Coper- 
nicus of the higher Astronomy. 

Oh, the mystery of the gospel of love! It has 
given birth to a moral heroism greater than the 
world has ever known. No heroism ever exhibited 
on the battlefields of the world has been equal to 
that exhibited in the career and sacrificial death 
of Jesus; but the soldier and martyr who bravely 
contend and calmly die for great and worthy ends 
and not for sordid and selfish purposes are upheld 
and strengthened by the same high moral heroism 


161 


The Victorious Life 


that sent Jesus forward on his victorious life of 
love and service and sacrifice. 

Again, the mystery of love! ‘‘Greater love hath 
no man than this that a man lay down his life 
for his friends.’’ ‘‘Ye are my friends if ye love 
me and keep my commandments.’’ ‘‘Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with 
all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the 
first and great commandment; and the second is 
like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self. On these two commandments hang all the 
law and the prophets.’’ ‘‘A new commandment 
I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have 
loved you.”? ‘‘AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.,”’ 

‘‘In the world ye shall have tribulations; but 
be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.’’ 
In the World War the gospel of force accomplished 
its own destruction and the victory achieved was 
that of a high moral heroism. The Kaiser was 
driven into voluntary exile by the outraged con- 
science of mankind because of his unrighteous 
exercise of power. Because his plan of campaign 
and his method of conquest, and those of his war 
lords, were inspired by the example of Alexander 
and not by the life and example, the plan of cam- 
paign and method of conquest of the humble 
Nazarene. 

Did Alexander live the victorious life? Is the 
Kaiser living such a life? Do those who exploit 

162 


The Victorious Life 


the public for private gain live the victorious life? 
Do those who find in the timeless messages of the 
Christian Faith nothing to startle and inspire 
and humble live the victorious life? When we 
give way to the feelings of envy, jealousy, selfish- 
ness, discouragement, doubt, ill-will and moral 
cowardice are we living the victorious lfe of the 
spirit? 

The conflict between the two ideals is still on. 
It is the eternal conflict between love and hate, 
truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, the 
higher and the lower. The battles of the future 
will be fought in the hearts of men and by those 
who adopt the plan of campaign and the method 
of conquest of him who conquered the world by 
love and truth and righteousness and service and 
sacrifice. 


‘<Speak, history! who are life’s victors? 
Unroll thy long annals, and say,— 

Are they those whom the world called the 
victors, who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell 
at Thermopylae’s tryst, 

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His Judges, 
or Socrates? Pilate or Christ?’’ 


163 


WORLD MISSION OF AMERICA 


Jesus said unto them, Go ye unto all the 
World and preach the Gospel to all men. 
—Mark 16:15. 


OnE of the desperate needs of the World today 
is for Christian leadership; a leadership that shall 
displace the Imperialism of the past. The life 
and institutions of Humanity need to be per- 
meated and transformed by the divine leaven of 
the Christian Faith. Christianity is the last word 
in the divine art of thinking and believing and 
living and Democracy is the last word in the right 
relations that should obtain between people and 
ruler; in essence and meaning they are mutually 
inclusive. 

For centuries now individuals, groups of in- 
dividuals, states and nations have been struggling 
for civil and religious liberty. They have resented 
the tyranny of oppression in state and in church 
and have not bowed in meek submission to either. 
It has been a conflict to the bitter end between 
Autocracy and Democracy, and Democracy has 
won. 

The fact is we have more liberty than we seem to 

164 


World Mission of America 


know how to use for wise and noble purposes. 
Never has there been in so brief a period so many 
erowned heads uncrowned. The old restraints of 
external authority have suddenly given way and 
liberty, for the time being, expresses itself in terms 
of license. Perhaps we have been so over anxious 
for liberty that we have not been anxious enough 
as to how it ought to be exercised and so for the 
present we are having a touch of chaos where we 
had hoped for law and order and personal restraint. 

The transition from the Arts of War to the 
Arts of Peace, through which we are now passing, 
is not an easy one. It is difficult for us to appre- 
ciate the fact that the preservation and improve- 
ment of the Social Order make a no less demand 
upon eitizens than the conduct of war makes upon 
soldiers. Some of the hardest battles of the World 
War were fought in the trenches when the soldiers 
were waiting the word to go over the top. 

Most of the work of citizenship is done in the 
trenches. It is also true that we are having to 
think and plan more in international terms than 
ever before, and we have had very little prepara- 
tion for this. And we are quite slow in learning 
that the World War has made greater changes in 
our lives and in the affairs of nations than it is 
possible for us to comprehend. All problems have 
become world problems; economic, educational, 
political, social and religious. All countries eventu- 


165 


World Mission of America 


ally must unite in a Society of Nations and learn 
to live and act together or the work of the Allies 
may have to be done all over again. 

What is needed in the World today above every- 
thing else is some great centralizing truth, some 
great steadying and stabilizing power, some great 
energizing and inspiring and uplifting influence, 
some great standard of living that can be applied 
equally as well to the affairs of nations as to the 
conduct of individuals. A Gospel that will enable 
us,— ‘To see life steadily and to see life whole.’’ 

Such a truth, such a power, such an influence 
and such a standard of living are found in the 
timeless messages of the Christian Faith. In the 
highest sense there is but one religion in the 
World ;—‘‘One God, one law, one element, one 
divine event to which the whole creation moves.’’ 
There are many interpretations, many explana- 
tions, many theories and many theologies. 

The white hight of the sun when admitted to a 
glass prism is so refracted as to be changed into 
all the colors of the rainbow; the more perfect the 
prism the more perfect the diffusion of the white 
light. The white lght of God’s truth is like 
the white light of the sun; it is everywhere but 
the human prisms through which it shines vary 
sreatly. In the spectrum analysis of some world 
religions we find only a few of the many colors of 
the rainbow and so are foreed to conclude that 


166 


World Mission of America 


they are only partial and fragmentary expressions 
of the white light of God’s truth. One of the 
many reasons why we believe in the supremacy of 
the Christian Faith is found in the fact that it 
places the supreme emphasis where it forever be- 
longs,—upon what is fundamental and universal 
for all men and for all nations. 

There is no room in Christianity, according to 
the teachings of its founder, for racial hatred or 
national prejudice. By precept and example the 
Master transcended what was narrow and provin- 
cial in the lives of his contemporaries; not only 
those in Palestine but in all other nations as well. 
His Gospel was not in any sense exclusive but in 
the broadest sense it was all-inclusive; ‘‘As high 
as heaven and as deep as the needs of man.”’ 

We are made aware of this aspect of his gospel 
when reading the parable of the Good Samaritan, 
in which Jesus sought to answer the question of 
the lawyer,—‘‘ Who is my neighbor?’’ The main 
point of the argument does not centre so much 
upon the act of kindness itself as it does upon the 
obvious truth that the kindness was rendered the 
wounded man by a Samaritan, by a Samaritan 
who was regarded by the Priest and the Levite as 
an enemy and no neighbor of theirs. To the Jew 
the commandment, ‘‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself’’ did not include Samaritans, Romans, 
Greeks and Gentiles. (In this respect the Jews 

167 


World Mission of America 


were no different than other people of that time). 
But to Jesus spiritual kinship existed wherever 
kindness and sympathy and goodness of heart and 
brotherly love were found, regardless of racial, 
religious or national differences. We need no 
better evidence of this attitude of Jesus than we 
find in the effect his life and example had upon 
the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul, as disclosed 
in their visions, one upon the house-top in Caesarea 
and the other on the road to Damascus. 

This commandment comes to us with a new 
meaning and a diviner insistence than ever before, 
—‘‘Go ye unto all the World and preach the Gos- 
pel to all men.’’ Yes, go no longer as individual 
missionaries of a nation only but go as a nation 
and do your part in helping to build Civilization 
upon the eternal foundations of Christian truth 
and character! We have come or are coming to 
understand that what is true for the indiwidual 
is true for mankind. Socvral life is individual life 
written large; national life 1s ndiwidual life writ- 
ten larger; wnternational life is individual life writ- 
ten stil larger; and the law of righteousness is 
supreme in the conduct of nations as rt 1s in that 
of wndwiduals. This 1s axiomatic! 

How strange it seems that the time has come 
for a nation to speak as one person in the councils 
of mankind? And that the hfe and example of 
one nation in the great Commonwealth of Nations 

168 


World Mission of America 


may be thought of as being very much like the 
life and example of an individual in the Social 
Order? How very important then that the con- 
certed opinion and influence of a whole country 
shall be based upon what is fundamental and uni- 
versal in the forward march of mankind? 

The World Mission of America was very clearly 
set forth by a chaplain of the French Army in 
a conversation he had with some of our soldiers 
at the close of the War. ‘‘The greatness of your 
nation (he said) means the responsibility of your 
nation. You have saved the liberty of the World; 
now you must organize the liberty of the World. 
The spirit of Christianity and the spirit of Democ- 
racy have not yet interpenetrated one another. 
To penetrate Democracy with religion is our real 
tasks. 

But why, we ask, does this World Mission, this 
‘‘task’’ come to us rather than to some other 
nation? Why does this responsibility rest more 
heavily upon our shoulders than upon the shoulders 
of others? 

The greatness of America and her qualifications 
for leadership are in part explained by the high 
moral and spiritual impulses that swayed the lives 
and directed the actions of the founders of our 
Republic. Said the English scholar, Wiliam E. 
Lecky,—‘‘ After all that can be said of material 
and intellectual advantages it remains true that 

169 


World Mission of America 


moral causes lie at the root of the greatness of 
nations, and it is probable that no nation ever 
started on its career with a higher level of moral 
conviction than the English colonies of America.’’ 

Our Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers in their re- 
ligious covenants and in their codes of law came 
nearer the spirit and purpose of the religion of 
Jesus than had any people since the days of the 
Apostles. They advocated a truer type of Chris- 
tianity than prevailed anywhere else in the World 
at that time. Our Forefathers had the unique 
distinction of turning this great wilderness of 
North America into one vast experiment station, 
as it were, wherein the laws of man were to be 
shaped into the image and likeness of the laws of 
God. Their political ideal was expressed in the 
words,—'‘Framing for ourselves just and equal 
laws, and yielding to them due submission and 
obedience.’’ And in their religious faith they 
agreed,—‘ ‘To walk together in all God’s ways 
made known unto them or to be made known unto 
them, according to the best of their endeavors, 
whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting 
them.’’ 

Not long ago Roger W. Babson had occasion 
to visit. the President of the Argentine Republic 
and during one of their conversations the Presi- 
dent said to him,—‘‘Mr. Babson, can you tell me 
why it is that South America, with so much greater 

170 


World Mission of America 


natural advantages, and having been settled before 
North America, is so backward compared with your 
country ?’’ Mr. Babson telling the incident said 
that while he had his ideas upon the matter he 
did not feel under the circumstances to express 
them, and so he turned to the President and 
asked him what he thought was the reason. He 
replied,—‘‘ Mr. Babson, South America was settled 
by Spaniards seeking gold. North America was 
settled by Pilgrim Fathers who went to your land 
to seek God.’’ ‘‘To whomsoever much is given 
of him shall much be required.’’ 

Thus, we may truly say that the larger mission of 
America was prefigured in the opening scenes of 
the drama of our national existence. This experi- 
ment station in Religion and Democracy has more 
than justified the hopes of its early pioneers. It 
has grown .by leaps and bounds until America 
today stands stronger than the strongest and what 
is best of all, America, in her diplomatic relations 
with other nations has earned the respect, the con- 
fidence and the affection of Humanity. 

The policy of Autoecracy is the exploitation of 
the many for the benefit of the few. The prin- 
ciple of Democracy is,—‘The greatest good to 
the greatest number,’’ with exploitation of none 
and justice for all. In the highest sense Democ- 
racy is the public and practical method of apply- 
ing truth, justice and righteousness to Citizenship. 


171 


World Mission of America 


However untrue politics, in this or in other ages 
may have been or may be now to such a high con- 
ception of responsibility, or however far from such 
an ideal may be the conduct of some of our poli- 
ticians, nevertheless, if we fail to imterpret our 
citizenship in terms of our religious faith or cease 
striving to make our citizenship an expression of 
that faith we court sorrow and disaster both for 
ourselves and for posterity. 

Is it an exaggeration, as some one has said that, 
—‘‘Politics is the royal art of ascertaining and 
accomplishing the will of God?’’ This is what the 
founders of our Republic believed and on the 
whole America has been true to such a belief. In 
our dealings with other nations we have not 
adopted the ethics of the so-called ‘‘ European 
Diplomacy,’’ our diplomacy, as a much beloved 
Secretary of State, John Hay, said,—‘‘Is based 
upon the principle found at the heart of the Golden 
Rule.’’ 

How true to the Christian Ideal was our treat- 
ment of China at the time of the Boxer uprising 
in 1900? It has been said that, ‘‘By remitting 
the indemnity of $14,000,000.00 the United States 
set a new ideal before the diplomatic world and 
offered to mankind an example of applied Chris- 
tianity not soon to be forgotten. This deed at- 
tracted the attention of all nations and even the 
most warlike said,—‘ That is better than war.’ ”’ 

172 


World Mission of America 


What is true of our dealings with China is even 
truer of our dealings with Japan. ‘‘The common 
school system of Japan owes its beginning and 
much of its suecess to the suggestion and encour- 
agement of an American scholar, Dr. Murry. For 
several years he was employed by the Japanese 
government, and he made the first draft of the 
system of education which Japan accepted.”’ 
‘When other nations hesitated to enter into treaty 
relations with Japan, America was the first to 
enter a treaty which involved for Japan the privi- 
leges of the International Postal Union.’’ Again, 
to mention only one more instance of our treat- 
ment of Japan, let us recall what happened in 1864. 
In that year the nations compelled Japan to pay 
to each an indemnity of $3,000,000.00 for a slight 
offence. The American government retained her 
portion for twenty years untouched in its vaults 
and finally returned the money to Japan. ‘‘ After 
debate (in the Japanese Parliament) it was de- 
cided to build a magnificent break-water and pier 
where the ships come and go; and it remains an 
everlasting monument to the friendship existing 
between these two nations.’’ 

This is the spirit of America penetrating and 
permeating not only the political but the economic, 
moral, educational and social life of mankind with 
its religious idealism. The spirit of America is the 
spirit that made our Forefathers strong and in- 


173 


World Mission of America 


vinecible. This spirit re-lived and kept the fires of 
patriotism burning during the bitter experiences 
of Valley Forge and also during the dark and 
eritical days of our Civil War. It re-lived in all 
the beauty and glory of its religious significance 
when the call came across the sea from the fields 
of Flanders; and there in those awful moments 
when the very heart of Humanity almost ceased 
to beat,—there in the midst of the smoke and the 
sounds and unspeakable horrors of a conflict that 
has never had its equal,—there side by side with 
their comrades of other nations our ‘‘Soldier Boys’’ 
gave the spirit of America to the World. We do 
well to bear these truths in mind,—‘‘ Lest we for- 
get.’? We do well again and again to dwell upon 
the deeper significance of our national life and 
history. 

We honor the patriot best by being patriotic. 
Our first duty lies in putting and keeping our own 
house in order. If we cannot put an end to the 
open defiance of law that is so wide spread in our 
midst we may ere long have no more of a mission 
among the nations than others have, or any national 
life worth preserving. We must see to wt that 
liberty is used for wise and noble ends. Free 
thought must be enlightened thought; free speech 
must be rational speech; free action and a free 
life must be a sincere and honest and a sympathetic 
and devout life. There is no servitude worse than 


174 


World Mission of America 


that of the barbarian, or libertine, or anarchist 
who is the victim of his ignorance and fears and 
uncontrolled passions. 

The titanic struggle of the ages was brought upon 
the nations because great and powerful Autoc- 
racies forsook Christ for Caesar and became a 
law unto themselves. We stand at the ‘‘Cross 
Roads’’ today. Another such conflict would set 
Civilization back a thousand years and more. In 
the timeless messages of the Christian Faith of 
love to God and love to man and in the spirit 
and method of the Christ Life are to be found 
the great centralizing and steadying and inspiring 
power, and influence and standards that are so 
desperately needed in the lives and affairs of the 
children of men. 

This faith calls aloud for a Commonwealth of 
Humanity, for a ‘‘Parliament of Man,’’ for a 
‘‘Hederation of the World.’’ This faith gave 
birth to this spirit of America and looks with 
sorrowful disdain upon our habit of prating about 
‘‘Horeign Entanglements’’ and regards as coward- 
ly our attitude of irresolution in the presence of 
the greatest challenge that has ever come to any 
nation. In our policy of isolation we are untrue 
to the faith and spirit of America and do not 
honor the memory of Washington as we ought. Did 
he not say,—‘‘ There are times when one cannot be 
too patient and there are other times when a man 


175 


World Mission of America 


cannot be too bold.’’ In the light of our past 
and in view of what Humanity has a right to 
expect of us for having practised such a new type 
of leadership among the nations, is this not one of 
the times when as a forward looking and forward 
going people we ‘‘cannot be too bold?’’ A touch 
of this boldness has sent us forward into the ‘‘In- 
ternational Court of Justice,’’ and if we allow it to 
have its rightful way in our national conduct it will 
ere long make us a member of ‘“‘The League of 
Nations.’’ We shall then be in a position to broad- 
cast our ideals, our example and our influence. 
In Democracy and the Christian Faith the rights 
of individuals and the atonomy of small nations 
are to be secured and the duties of man and man- 
kind better understood and better defined. After 
all is said, 1t 1s what I am to you, you are to me, 
man to mankind and what mankind 1s to man that 
should ever be our highest concern as a society 
of individuals or as a society of nations. Our 
supreme and glorious ‘‘Task’’ is to put all the 
justice, honor, harmony, beauty, love, heroism, 
faith and Christ-like service we possibly ean into 
these relations we sustain to each other as members 
one of another and as children of the Larger Life. 
In the spirit of our immortal Lincoln let us 
now go forth in the faith that right makes might, 
not only physical but moral and spiritual. And 
if we determine to do what is right for ourselves 


176 


World Mission of America 


and for all mankind we shall soon find ourselves 
doing what is wise and what is true and what is 
just, and in so doing we shall know ere long that 
God is on our side, as He was on Lincoln’s side. 

The helpful and inspiring thought in all this is 
that, we have each and all a part in the World 
Mission of America by helping in thought, word, 
deed and influence to strengthen her faith and 
spirit and qualifications for Christian leadership, 
however humble or exalted that part may happen 
to be. 

We are all in many respects like the Italian stone 
eutter of Quincey that Dr. Charles E. Park tells 
about, who chipped away on an endless succession 
of granite blocks and occasionally wondered what 
it all meant. Then, one Sunday evening, after 
visiting friends in Boston, he started back through 
the eity with his wife and tribe of children to take 
a train for their home in the little town of Quincy 
Adams. In a silent street he stopped to look at 
a half finished bank building. At first only idly 
curious, he suddenly became absorbed in the mag- 
nificent structure. He had recognized some of the 
granite that he himself had been cutting. This, 
he said to himself, was what in listless heavy- 
spirited fashion, he had been working on; what he 
had been helping to build! His wife had to drag 
him away. They just managed to catch their train. 

Such is the divine law of our interdependence! 


177 


World Mission of America 


We are members one of another, the world over 
and if ‘‘one member suffers all members suffer and 
if one member is honored all members are 
honored.”’ 

Finally, let us remember that the white light 
of God’s truth is everywhere! We can no more 
take the sun out of the sky than religion out of 
human. hearts, out of the Social Order or out of 
the World Order. To do so would be equivalent to 
taking the law of gravitation out of Nature, the 
fertility out of the soil, intelligence out of human 
minds, honor out of citizenship and statesmanship, 
and faith, hope and love out of the life of our 
common Humanity. This is the Gospel that is 
fundamental and universal to all men and to all 
nations. 

We are to prepare our hearts and the hearts of 
our fellowmen by the practice of the Christian 
virtues so that in the spiritual analysis of our lives 
there may appear all, or nearly all of the colors 
that have been revealed to us in the white light 
of God’s truth. 

And with the light of God’s truth will surely 
come the warmth of His love and we shall want 
to live as His children and as loyal disciples of the 
Master. We shall want to live as he lived, as 
those who are willing to do everything in their 
power to speed the coming of a happier and better 
day for all mankind. Yes, we shall be anxious to 


178 


World Mission of America 


live the kind of life that Dr. Phillip Brooks had a 
vision of when he said that,—‘‘I want to live such 
a life that if all individuals were living it the mil- 
lennium would be here, nay, heaven would be 
here,—the universal presence of God.’’ THE 
CHRISTIAN LIFE IS SUCH A LIFE! 


THESE ARE ONLY SOME FEW 
OF THE TIMELESS 
MESSAGES OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 





al a ~M 
“4 
‘ ( 
pat ’ 
i) ee | 
‘ 
, } d > 
o j h f 7) i 
Pa at) le Pale ‘ht Caves! La OP hh, 
f . ¢ va ‘ ; *) e a 
RRR AL AR SGT nn 
7 ‘ ¥ Lah hb dh Fi) ake et 46 a ba i Aik 
\4 y ei ly i is + ' 
LN; AL Ta ar Cs A Pog et a eo 
‘ vd ih fy? Whewis ny Py he + Tur’ 
A ta { ry aR fei ¥ ¥," x *L tAph ps Any Per S Live :. 
4 " Jit) f ' a, aro , LiL ’ ire 
f Le rae ALD 1) } 5 if i ‘ Kt e 
' i) : i] ia) es rate ® A} "Es 4 
a : ‘ +> J - 5 
Vid aS . : ; *s Ra ' F A 
5 yy et ees } , ; ahs | "ay 
Misi COE Yet Ae A AAP Aly) ie. : 
i i { ae ‘ i ih ae ht 4 ne , ih Wit ion 
" , ? vi i ' i 
fy f Degen) 4h Pees ah ge te j AS Ola | hy 
ar ya | eis VP ihe wh ) ix ae -ais 
} Pe aR i Mad : ; \ ‘ ‘ 
ae ‘ va 4 i i ( . 
f ty > , F byl He pa F TU AR 
‘4 { Dyer i ron ohh , lt ere be 
$ 4 : i : : 
‘ pie : ' ; j 
(MAD TEAS ; i : Pld, ‘ ae i 
' Ws se x * es , # 
) + l \ 
i i ii nhs f 
. nite i ' Ly 4 
wis } j ws i ’ 
i ‘ j , ; 
Pi J mt , £ y ‘ j f i? 
; vit } f \ ' 
i ‘2 ' 
a vs , js j \ Lig ‘ 
F if : i , \ 
| 5 yi ell ic 
pot wa ‘ ’ I z 
7 ' A ‘ te, ‘ 
HT GAY | wi 
i { i \ 
ay lw 
' S 
i , ; a 
A‘ ( aah 1 ; 
\ \ ' : wil AREA ak 
ah f ’ ay Ali 
A i 
‘ i ; os 
} - 
en Pte | ] 
} i ’ : YY Th ' 
7 
cs i, \f , 
i Vv 4 7 
: J { : ow ‘ i 1 
tia \ i A ty / . A K { ; 
’ ‘ hes : a 
‘ vy vite tar what , , 
Pha ie 
' i fy 1 
y 1? ‘ t ~y 
t Z a ) ’ 
ah ae ' wah ie teas iy | j 
Dene Te aivae a eA, | 
i i "Wore Lark. 
' { ) 5 
rev by vi ‘Ee! 7 
ke ] ve in a. 
. * 
1, , 4 i, 
ie i i “yt , 
ahh | it } 14, \ 4 r ' 
* , i i \ + 
/ hy i ! Uae a, , f \ 7 | 
a4 ‘ { 4 \ oeU i a) " — Ps am; 
ea j aL NPR ar 8 a kay { ta nih 
' } ae : i é ; 
aa % { PAG 5 
) : Ld v* , “a ya | i, yon F 4 7 i Pu 
ie we bash as . 
7 Ta sy ‘ i ‘ “ 
yet iy { 
4 ! ¥ VW no gee) | rid he 5 4 ey, 
: ara i Bis ry ity ‘ i ca ey) ht 
j & i | ‘ 
! ‘ a Ay 
4 bi rev eas A ' iy t $ ¥ 
: i" | 4 4 vy Ve 
j ‘ i 4 yy . ‘ 1" Wy) wi 
vp? Wie * a 
MARAT EAGT vei! Y je M4 wrt 
ib, thet AGA pegs She tnt 
7 + ae ae Wa < iv 4 
f Ath a ae it is had Ais ( F 
«¥ { 4 \ eA Ape Aye My pct Nhe r 4 ie 
Wy hi ( } t A ea 
wry i ib ah : ‘ 
. : Ae, 7 f . re 
{ ) 4 ahh a N o ‘ 4 
i i 1h fit Pe ‘A 
, ree ie } i if \ 
‘ a j > / ew ¥ 
Q rie ‘ ic Mia lee i Te 
ve ate 4 jeg A ae! OED) 
Pee HE ov Sealy ‘ eu Pat MK 
; : fail ’ } i” 7 ry vt _ \) C4 
<4 } \ Nat 1 LIS i 
nthe } ‘68 i ed 
7 Po | i 
lit Pal ; Bl Ay ALS Sa? ‘pint 
wie . 4 ot4 das, OPT rn ‘J wii ial 
‘ i My jii's wa » a rT Ams i ; Lah ie i" om, i 
j WV i % ‘ hi “s dy : is if int y A igi 
‘ ‘ ‘iva, Aap ‘aey CUE fa: ir ‘ OSs. 


ip te ” ag 
i an 











7 Par. 
oD 
ng dy 
yy CaM i ‘ 
ree ‘\ roy 
ee . ry, 
wit ; AT: 
i Py OS ree OY, Ae 
Aine wD 4 
4 Cia ah Me bt 
FAP lg), The 
Py hehe si 
ra fi) os fi ea Ae 
ee oy | ue 
MA ‘ i meh 
cup) J ij i se 
a A Pa kd" 
. “Nigga eye ‘ 
= { ; P ; i | f 
y 


i i ti) Oe aD 72% j A ha | iN ‘ Nib ha “ A : ; {> 
wwe ; 4 7 peter 4 » ! P 
if ra) ae oh 9 ‘ at uv | A OF = 
Oi Ea ary, Pavan bans 
PORTA A an as re a 
‘ 


? "| } 
« ae . 
ir ; ~ Ly 
ai ) iv ‘ tw ‘ 
z 4i + i 
bate ah “As is * 
; + ; f fs , 
} rc uy 
} ie 
4 i] 
‘ t Ags ? s a 
: YS) HY ‘i 
\ 
iv ; 
hi , | 
ry ¥ j 
La y i 
‘ 4 f i 
; ey { 
x t 
= 
‘ " am, ‘ 
“th : 
TRESS AY 
' z ‘ 
Tri. i » 
hi i 4 ' 
i ; yn ‘- / 
J ay ; ; ‘ Win 
5 7 a, te : i F oe | . ly ~ 
‘ } LP) ie f a ' 
af 4 ‘ere? é ‘ } H 
NT wren thy ae) Ce See z 
a ‘ i" J jf ny ri 
i AM j i 
4 , at) A 7 ' - 
ih : | , Lact 
‘ je nik? \ 'e:) : " ' ) tase 


i 
Won | 


La 
Y She Petites Tp 
Neck ayy , 

" Pans a 


* ys wo eT 
; LCN ae 


} 
b ‘ hl 1 POD 
iA i } Mit , vi rt AV ae 


Date Due 











a 


LU = 
F - 
= rene 
we! 
p 
7 
- Lach 7 
—- 


& 





1 
| 


, 


: 





